


Damage Control

by linman



Series: Tenebrae [10]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-03
Updated: 2010-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:05:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linman/pseuds/linman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of season seven, Elisabeth, Giles, and Brian must come to terms with their situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Elisabeth Bowen unlocked the door of her flat, hitching her shoulder to adjust for the weight of her bag, and let inertia carry her inside.  She put down the bag in the foyer and began turning on lights.

            To all appearances Brian had, despite the hectic rush of the end of term, been keeping her flat clean and well-managed.  He had even, she noticed, neatened her desk into shaggy topic-oriented piles of books, papers, and index cards.

            She felt a sudden, small pang of affection for him; and so after taking a shower, pinning up her wet hair, and donning clean jeans and a T-shirt, she picked up the phone and dialed his number.

            “Hello?”

            “Brian.  It’s me.”

            There was a silence.

            “Hello?” Elisabeth said.  “Hello?”

            “I’m here,” Brian said after a moment, his voice oddly whiskered.  “Where are you?”

            “I’m home.  That’s why I called.”

            “I’m coming over,” he said instantly.

            “Of course, you juggins,” Elisabeth said.

            Brian had never made the distance from his flat to hers so fast.  In what seemed like minutes she was opening the door to him and stepping back silently to let him enter, as was the custom of the vampire-conscious.

            She started toward the kitchen, an offer of a late tea on her lips, but he caught her and pulled her into a crushing hug, with hands that meant to be gentle.  Startled, but moved, she hugged him back with some force.

            She waited, but he did not let go of her, and she began to squirm gently.  “Brian,” she said, “my goodness.  Are you all right?”

            “Of course I’m all right,” he said as she extricated herself.  “Are you?”

            She met his eye steadily.  “Yes.”  She searched his face.  “Are you sure you’re all right?  Nothing’s happened, has it?”

            “Of course it hasn’t,” Brian said.  “I’m just glad to see you—is all.”

            “Glad to see me alive,” Elisabeth said; the slight look of mortification that crept over Brian’s face told her she had read correctly his altered diction.  She decided not to rub it in.

            “I want to go out,” she declared.

            “Right,” Brian said, “absolutely.”  He glanced at his watch.  “There’s Bach in the chapel tonight—if we go now we should be able to catch most of it, I should think.”

            “Just what the doctor ordered,” Elisabeth said.

 

*

 

After the hug Brian’s Britishness reasserted itself, and he escorted her decorously to the chapel and into a back pew to hear what was left of the Bach program, without any undue fuss, the wild impulsiveness that had attracted her to him completely camouflaged in Oxfordian rectitude.  He kept his eyes front, drinking in the music, and after a few moments’ musing Elisabeth did the same.

            The Bach did for Elisabeth what merely thinking things through could not:  the work to be done, the pieces to be picked up, the path to be walked—all lost their bloat of significance and fell lightly ahead of her.  And the precise beauty of the music gave her back the mastery of her mind for a simple, buoyant moment that restored her confidence more than leaping back into reading would have done.

            She was sorry when the last bow was drawn over the last string.

            Afterwards, still enraptured, she followed Brian out of the pew and into the quiet Oxford night.  It was Brian’s sudden, self-conscious movement that alerted her to the glances being shot her way: he tucked her hand in the crook of his arm protectively, and carried his head high.  Elisabeth had no trouble doing the same; she always carried her head high, high and a little to the side in a curious and slightly querulous attitude that the First Evil had had no trouble mimicking perfectly….

            Elisabeth tucked her chin down and forced her thoughts back to the music still echoing down the runnels of her nerves.  But the charm was broken.  She could see clearly now the guarded looks her peers were giving her, and though she was now obviously walking the streets in her right mind, her last appearance in College had been a dramatic and (she suddenly realized) quite publicly ignominious collapse.  As if scratched for her on some waiting slate, the conversations wrote themselves in her head, her responses repressive and slightly high-pitched.  _Yes, I’m quite well now.  Yes, I did have a collapse—wore myself out, you know.  And there were personal matters causing me stress, you see, and everything at once—but I’m quite all right now.  Yes, I do have some catching up to do.  Thank you for the good wishes.  Yes, it’s good to be back.  Thank you.  Thank you._

            She ignored the faint qualm of nausea these reflections brought, and cheerfully agreed to accompany Brian to the pub.

 

*

 

She had been quite hungry earlier, but once the pub food was put down before her, it was suddenly as if she didn’t know what to do with it.  At Brian’s wordless urging, she began to dig in, slowly, meditatively, then faster.  In the end she managed almost to clean her plate.  “I can get you more if you’d like,” Brian said eagerly, and she smiled at him, and shook her head.

            When they got back to her flat it was late enough for the quiet to have descended almost completely over the streets.  Elisabeth said, “Could you come in?  Just for a moment while I….”  She didn’t finish the sentence, but it wasn’t necessary; Brian knew she wanted him there while she looked under the bed and in all the closets, just in case.

            He followed her throughout the flat, checking everything over after she had her turn; and when she circled back at last to the front door he trailed to an uneasy stop before her.

            “Thank you,” she said finally.

            “No problem,” he said.  “I….”  But he stopped, and the silence grew.

            “I saw the people looking at me,” Elisabeth said gently.

            Brian shoved his hands into his pockets.  “Like to punch their lights out,” he muttered.  “You’re all right.”

            She offered him a little indulgent smile.

            There was something Brian was trying to spit out, looked like; but in the end all he said was, “I’m glad you’re back.”

            “I’m glad I am too.”  She waited to see if he would ask her where she had been; when he did not, she decided that either Anne had told him and convinced him to sit tight, or else he had reined himself in of his own accord.  But then he spoke again, haltingly:

            “Elisabeth—”

            He stopped again, and she decided to get it over with and tell him now.  “I was in Bath,” she said, “at Rupert’s flat.”

            He flushed and shook his head.  “That wasn’t—I mean….I figured it out, after a while.  That’s all right.  I understand that.  I do.  I just—” He switched tracks abruptly.  “You didn’t see him, did you?”

            “Yes,” Elisabeth said, “I did.  I waited till he came home, and then I left.”  Indeed it was one of the things keeping her buoyant: she had seen him, and they both had survived.

            Brian stood looking at her intently for a moment, then said:  “Okay….”  He drew a deep breath, then said more firmly:  “Okay.”

            Elisabeth lowered her chin and looked up at him gravely.

            Brian sighed.  Then sighed again, thinking.  “So…,” he said finally, “I guess it’s over then.”  He softened the end of his sentence into almost a question.

            “As over as it’s ever going to be,” Elisabeth said ruefully; then realized Brian might not have been talking about the war.

            Before she could ask, Brian said softly:  “I’m damned sorry, Elisabeth.”

            And she quailed from asking the question.  She stood looking up at him helplessly, and at last said:  “It’s going to take some time.”

            He nodded.  “Yes,” he said, “I expect it will.”

            A breath later he asked, moving a tentative hand as if to touch her elbow:  “May I kiss you goodnight?”

            The question, and his solid stance, told her what sort of kiss to expect.  She swallowed dryly for a moment, and then was all right again.  “Yes,” she said.  “But—hang on—”  Steady-handed, she removed her glasses and held them at her waist, hesitating, before looking up at him again.  He was smiling, a little smile that seemed new to her before she realized that the lines of his face had been changed by a new trace of strain and care.  She had not quite noticed it.

            He bent close, his hand guiding her elbow, and she shut her eyes, wondering if she would have left her knowledge of how to kiss on the other side of her personal holocaust.  But no such egregious awkwardness presented itself: Brian merely kissed her lips, and she kissed him back with the same patience and circumspection he was using to her.

            She caught the scent of his flat on his skin and clothing, which evoked the memory of happier times, at the same time as she felt the little shudder that went through him.  This, she knew, was not a specimen of the recreational snogging Brian engaged in at the drop of a hat, though it was certainly no less interested, no less seeking, than that.  He pressed the kiss a little further, and she responded favorably without qualm.  The encouragement moved him to slip a hand along her waist and draw her gently closer.  She could sense, as strongly as if it were a scent, the odd mixture of his naked emotional need and the lack of self-interest with which he pressed his gift.  It woke pain in her, but she did not flinch from him; she let the kiss end naturally, and lowered her chin when their lips parted.

            He let his shoulders fall, and relaxed his touch on her.  She raised her eyes to his.

            She cleared her throat.  “Did you find out what you wanted to know?” she said quietly.

            He shut his eyes a moment and nodded, and she responded to the look on his face with a spontaneous soft hug, her glasses threaded through one hand on his back.  He hugged her back, gently this time, and they stood like that silently for a minute.

            “I’m glad to be home,” she murmured against his chest.

            He did not answer in words, merely held her close an extra moment before letting go and stepping back.

            “If you need anything, call,” he said.

            “Understood,” she said.

            She saw him out the door with a little smile.  After it shut between them, she leaned against it for a moment, pressing a hand to the pain in her chest, before going resolutely away to get ready for bed.

            She slept that night with most of the lights on.

 

*

 

“Let’s see, now—there’s the list of available summer tutors, and the list of lectures—”

            Elisabeth shuffled through the unruly sheaf of papers.  “And the balance sheet—”

            “Right.  You’ve got that, then.  Good.”  Dean Blakely rearranged the papers on his desk and neatly slotted them back into the manila file headed in his own awkward ballpoint, “Elisabeth Bowen—medical leave.”

            “Thank you for putting all this together for me all at the end of term.”  Elisabeth neatened the papers’ edges on her knee and slid them into her waiting satchel.  She had dressed with care for this interview: after some frustrated dithering on the phone to Brian, she had nixed pastels (too waiflike, despite their harmony with her coloring), her solid black suit (too funereal, and though she had one or two things to mourn she didn’t want to look severe and gothic), and red (the color of crazy people, she had insisted over Brian’s bewildered protests), and chosen the black slacks, boots, and tailored oxford shirt she wore on business trips.  In the end, it hadn’t mattered:  Dean Blakely had welcomed her with his usual detached warmth and the interview had proceeded with the minimum of awkwardness.

            The Dean did not wave away her thanks, but said merely, “It’s good to see you back on your feet.”

            “It’s good to _be_ back on my feet,” Elisabeth said, shooting him a grateful glance from her efforts to organize her satchel at her feet.  “It was touch-and-go there for a while.”

            “Yes.”  The Dean paused, then broke into a small, diffident smile that reminded her painfully of Rupert.  “It seems rather a miracle, doesn’t it.”

            Elisabeth smiled, her first unforced smile since—it seemed—forever.  “It certainly seems so to me, sir.”

            Her satchel was latched shut, and all that remained of the meeting was the leavetaking.

            “Get on with you,” the Dean said, picking up his pen and offering her one more affectionate glance over his glass-rims.

            Elisabeth got on, cautiously rejoicing.

 

*

 

After the initial juddering start, Elisabeth’s life back at home in Oxford settled back into its usual rhythm within hours rather than days.  Money was tight, but that was nothing new—and as long as Elisabeth could afford to keep all the lights in her flat burning through the night, she had no complaints.

            She sifted through all the notes she had made from Christmas on, and decided after half-a-night’s stunned frustration to trash the lot of them and start over.  It ought to have felt like failure, but it didn’t: there was light, sweet freedom in clearing all the sticky-notes from her books and starting with fresh, blank paper and index cards.

            She avoided mirrors whenever possible, but that was nothing new either; and whatever her books could offer her in the way of self-reflection caused only the echo of  pain.

            Instead of getting up the nerve to call Anne, Elisabeth settled for showing up at church on Sunday and crossing her fingers that Anne wouldn’t be offended by her reticence.  She thought she might have caught her priest’s eye once during the sermon, but the change in Anne’s face had been too negligible at that distance for Elisabeth to be sure.  With trepidation in her thoughts and spiritual hunger ghosting her body, Elisabeth went forward for communion and knelt at the rail, hands up.  She lifted her eyes to Anne’s face when she came round with the paten: there was joy and greeting in the vicar’s eyes—_the body of Christ, the bread of heaven_—and then she passed on in a soft rustle of vestments leaving Elisabeth elated, with the wafer in her nested palms—unprepossessing, but sustenance indeed.

            At the church door she arranged to have tea with Anne the next day at the vicarage; she went, accordingly, and found that they did not need to say much after all.  Anne inquired after Rupert and the Sunnydale war as after a foregone conclusion; Elisabeth knew that the general result of the war must be moderately obvious to the priest, who had been observing the world with her usual acuity.  In other news, Anne had started work on her Visitation icon, and they had a fine lively conversation about the act of prophesying and other moments of recognition.  Elisabeth went home without having explained much of anything to Anne but feeling unburdened nonetheless.

            All in all, Elisabeth’s reassimilation into her own life was proving to be remarkably easy, like putting on old, familiar clothing and forgetting all about it.  The old rhythms came to her hands with only half a thought, and she paused only at rare moments to wonder at it.

            It wasn’t till a number of days had passed that she realized that the very ease of returning was making possible that check in her thoughts moment to moment, remembering him, waiting for him, worrying about him, mourning him.  He had not called, or written, and she knew it was not because he was busy, though undoubtedly he was.  He had not called or written because that was not what Rupert Giles did: he showed up at your door unannounced in the small hours, or broad afternoon, or sweet dark evening, and said his piece, or picked his fight, or asked your help, or kissed you consumingly, or thrust you to the wall and twisted your wrist to the finest, most exquisite point of agony—

            If he did come, Elisabeth reflected one afternoon with her pencil point suspended a few millimeters above the surface of a blank sheet of paper, the small talk would be untenable.  And if he did not come....

            Elisabeth wasn’t sure what she would do if he did not come.  Just keep going, she supposed.  Maybe, eventually, cry, though she was very bad at it and didn’t foresee herself having any better success now that she knew grief to its worst depth.

            She decided tenuously to give him six months; and if he didn’t come she would write him a letter and let him go.  Mostly for her own sake, not his.

            A long letter.

 

*

 

The problem, Rupert Giles reflected as he buttoned his overcoat, is that having the ball in one’s court gives one a myriad possible wrong choices.

            _When you are ready, come to Oxford, and we will talk_, she had said in her note.  It didn’t say how he would know he was ready.  It didn’t say what sort of “coming to Oxford” would be welcome, it didn’t say how long they would talk, it didn’t say whether she planned to forgive him, it didn’t say what to do in the event that she didn’t—or in the event that she did, for that matter.  It didn’t say any of those things.

            She had left all that up to him, which seemed to betoken either a reassuring trust in him, or an indifference to the mechanics of their breakup, and Rupert didn’t know which would be more hubristic to think.  So he dithered for days, in between wiring money and assembling files and making phone calls, even though he had considered himself “ready” from the moment he read the note.

            And he was afraid.  He was so afraid that it finally came to the point one morning where he realized that if he didn’t get up the courage to see her today, he never would.  Before he could think too hard about it, he got up, dressed and shaved quickly and carefully, and propelled himself out the door.

            By the time he arrived in Oxford, however, he shied away from the quick turnoff toward her flat and wandered around the perimeter of the city, finally choosing a visitor’s parking place and entering on foot, cursing his own cowardice as he did so.

            And as if it knew and disapproved, Oxford refused to be a distraction for him: all the shops he had either been in before or felt no interest in visiting.  He wandered vaguely in the direction of the Magdalen Bridge, feeling more and more lost.

            It was more for desperate refuge than anything else that made him go into one of a small row of bookshops not a far walk from Magdalen Bridge and the road to Elisabeth’s flat.  He nodded to the proprietor, whom he knew vaguely, and began to browse.  He thought of buying Elisabeth a book for a present only to discard the idea almost at once as cheap.  Let her welcome his overtures first; then he would aspire to giving her gifts.

            He put back the small octavo George Herbert he had been perusing and moved up the aisle to the front of the store: and suddenly found himself face-to-face with someone he knew.

            “_You_,” Brian Whitaker said from between his teeth.

            Rupert saw the fist coming—and hell, it wasn’t a particularly well-thrown punch—but he was tired and his reaction time was not what it had been.  It connected with a crack and a dark flash, and he reeled sideways and backwards, fetching up against a glass upright display case, which cracked dully at his impact.

            Brian sailed in, ready with another one; but the first one had snapped Rupert instantly into survival mode, and he was ready too.  Before Brian could land another punch, Rupert caught him, spun and shoved him against the display case, which now shattered.  His hands went for the man’s throat, but Brian managed to get a knee in and flung him back against a shelf.  Rupert, completely unmindful of the domino slither and thump of falling books, lurched forward again and got in two good ones before clutching for Brian’s throat again.  He’d just gotten a good grip when he was bundled aside and half-smothered in a large bear hug.  Brian, not yet restrained, flung himself madly at his face; it took two spectators to haul him back by the arms and get him out of reach.  Brian’s face was flushed hot.  “You—bastard—” he gasped, “—_bastard_—”

            The battle-madness was fading from Rupert’s senses.  He stood, no longer needing the restraining arms round him, and watched as Brian was manhandled back and urged toward the door.  At last Brian went, shouting hoarsely on the threshold, “You _stay away_ from her!”  Outside, he pointed furiously at Rupert through the front window, before stalking off, bleeding from the lip.

            It was only left then for Rupert to look round him at the damage that had been done:  a display case destroyed, a shelf upended, books everywhere.  He looked up from one unfortunate tome lying open at his feet, the threads of a pulled signature showing, to the stricken face of the bookshop’s owner, and heard a deep sigh that he recognized for his own.

            “Oh dear,” Rupert said.

 

*

 

Elisabeth got off the phone with her old boss, Mr. Edwards, and finished writing out the notes she was making on book buys.  Next week she planned to work in a trip or two, just to boost her income a little.

            She had just got out her planner and was beginning to transfer some of the notes to the calendar when a loud, urgent knock sounded at the door.  Elisabeth went to check the peephole, her pulses suddenly fluttering.

            It was Brian.  She opened the door to him and he edged swiftly inside, talking.

            “I reckon you can stay with me,” he said.  “He doesn’t know where I live, that’ll buy us some time.”

            “What are you talking about?”  Elisabeth squinted after him as he strode further into her flat.  “And what happened to your mouth?”

            Brian swiped at the blood with his fingers and brought them away to look at it.  “Bastard,” he muttered, digging for his handkerchief.

            “What—_happened_,” Elisabeth said.

            “You do have a bag, right,” Brian said.  “It won’t take long to pack.”

            “Brian.”  Elisabeth folded her arms.

            “Bastard hit me,” Brian said, wiping feverishly at his fingers with the handkerchief, then dabbing at his lips.

            “_Who_ hit you?”

            “Who do you think!”

            Elisabeth stared at him, shaking her head.  The faintest of possibilities was beginning to suggest itself to her, but her brain seemed to have jammed.

            He looked up at her and said impatiently, “It was your bastard of an ex-boyfriend that did this to me.”

            “Rupert hit you?”

            He hooted a laugh.  “You’re surprised?”

            “But _why_?  You mean he just attacked you?”

            “He’s a madman,” Brian said.  “He got his hands round my throat.  He’d’ve choked me if someone hadn’t pulled him off.”

            “And you didn’t do anything to provoke him?”

            Brian stared at her.  “Provoke him?  I had to have provoked him?”  His voice shot up a few notes.

            Elisabeth’s brain suddenly clicked back into action.  “You hit him first,” she said, in the voice of understanding.

            “I—” Brian’s face belied any denial he might have tried to make.

            She flushed.  “What are you, stupid or something?”

            “Oh, don’t come over all John Spencer with me—”

            “I’m perfectly serious.  Are you stupid?  Are you certifiable?  What the hell were you thinking?  You know he just got done fighting in a war—”

            “He was crazy before he ever fought that war, and anyway I don’t care if he just fought El Alamein singlehanded—”

            “El Alamein, my foot.  Demons, Brian.  Hand-to-hand combat with demons stronger than any human.  You don’t—you don’t just walk up and offer to punch his lights out after that!”

            “All the more reason why I’m not going to just sit around while he stalks you,” Brian said, with energy.

            Elisabeth broke into a disbelieving laugh.  “You think he’s _stalking_ me?”

            “Why else would he be in Oxford?” Brian insisted.

            “Because I asked him to come here,” Elisabeth said flatly.

            There was a short silence.  Brian let the hand holding his handkerchief drop to his side.  “You asked him to come here,” he repeated.

            “Yes.  I told him that when he was ready he should come to Oxford and we would talk.”  Despite herself, Elisabeth lifted her chin high.

            “That’s not gonna happen,” Brian said, with a final, dismissive headshake.

            “Why not?”

            “Because I won’t let it,” Brian said.

            For a split second Elisabeth went perfectly still, gathering fury.  Then she exploded.

            “What, are you trying to Austin Grey me now?” she said.  “You’ve got no business—”

            Brian went white, and raised his voice to match hers.  “I’m not some stupid swain meddling in your affairs.  Goddammit, I’m your best friend!”

            Elisabeth’s answer came low and savage.  “Then _act like it_.”

            In the silence that followed, they stood breathing hard, the beginnings of deep dismay creeping over them as the hurt set in.  Finally Elisabeth pulled off her glasses and pinched at the bridge of her nose.  “Where’s Rupert now?  Do you know?”  She took her hand away enough to glare at Brian.

            Still white in the face, Brian averted his eyes from her, and answered her in a dull tone.  “I don’t know.  He was still in St. Andrew’s Bookstore, last I saw.”

            Elisabeth’s continued silence prolonged the shock eating the room.  Finally Brian looked at her.  Her face was drawn and stony, eyes slightly wide.  When she spoke, her words dropped lightly into the silence and only served to highlight it.

            “You picked a fight in a bookstore?”

            Brian didn’t answer, and she repeated the question, louder.

            “You picked a fight in a _bookstore_?”

            “I—that was—he was—”  Brian stopped, unable to think of a good defense.

            “This is—I can’t—”  Elisabeth made to put her glasses back on, but gave up and uttered another little unfunny laugh.  “Just go,” she said to Brian.  “Just—go.”

            “Elisabeth—”

            “No.  I can’t deal with you right now.  Just go.”

            He hesitated, but Elisabeth gestured toward the still-open door with her glasses, and he finally went.  On the threshold he paused to look back at her to make one last appeal.  “Don’t—don’t do anything—”

            He stopped.

            “Stupid?” Elisabeth finished, without humor.  “I’ll try.”

            Brian turned without another word and strode out, leaving the door wide open.

 

*

 

In the back room of St. Andrew’s Bookstore, Rupert took the makeshift ice-pack away from his jaw to sip at a styrofoam cup of hot peppermint tea.  The tea was horrible, but Mr. Carnagey had run out of Darjeeling and could only offer the stuff he kept on hand for sour stomach.

            Rupert took the tea, though he didn’t have a sour stomach.  Yet.

            He had no idea how he was going to explain himself to Elisabeth.  It wasn’t as if he could keep her from finding out: even if he hadn’t got a bruised face, there was Brian Whitaker to consider.  He was probably with her now, rousing her sympathy and indignation, as if he needed that on top of everything else.  It wasn’t fair.

            And so Rupert was not at all surprised when the phone rang and Mr. Carnagey began to have a very ominous conversation.

            “Ah, yes, and what can I do for you?...Oh, yes, the incident.  Well, I’m not rightly sure what happened exactly—Mr. Giles came in; and then Mr. Whitaker came in, I suppose about that Gibbon he called me about the other day; and I suppose they saw each other, and I looked up and Mr. Whitaker was throwing a punch at Mr. Giles.  He didn’t look ready for it, but he fought back and we had to restrain them both; and then Mr. Whitaker left before we could send for the police to sort it out...Well, there’s a glass upright display case shattered, though none of the contents were harmed, thank God; a shelf upended, but all the books seem to be all right except one, and that I think we can repair...Oh that’s very kind of you, Miss Bowen, but Mr. Giles has already assured me he is good for the damages...Oh, don’t apologize, please—these things happen, you know...Ah—yes.  Yes, he’s still here.  One moment, please.”  Heavy footsteps, then Mr. Carnagey reappeared in the back room with the cordless phone in his hand.  “Telephone for you, Mr. Giles.”

            Rupert put down the noxious tea and took the phone as Moses might have seized the tail of the staff-snake at God’s command.  “Hello?”

            “Rupert,” Elisabeth said, in a cordial voice not unlike Buffy’s when she was really pissed off.  “Are you all right?”

            He stammered, glancing around as if looking for the answer.  “Um—er—yes.”

            “Then I want you at my flat within ten minutes.  Do you understand?”

            “Yes.”

            “Good.”

            “I’ll have to—” But she had already hung up.  “—walk,” he finished lamely.  He had just remembered his car was on the other side of Oxford.  He stared at the phone a moment, then handed it mutely back to Mr. Carnagey, who had lingered near him with an air of mingled politeness and puckish curiosity.

lt;/p&gt;

            Rupert stood up wearily.  He was getting too old for all this.  “I have to go,” he said, putting the icepack down next to the tea.  “Thanks for the tea.  Here—” he rummaged in his burberry for a card— “here’s my number if you need to get into touch with me.”

            As he let the bookstore’s door fall shut with a small tinkle of the bell and set off down the street toward Magdalen Bridge, Rupert reflected dismally that his level of dread, against all odds, had increased tenfold.  Manfully he quickened his heavy footsteps to a pace that would take him to Elisabeth’s flat within ten minutes.

            Perhaps the interview would be mercifully short.

 

*

 

Elisabeth put down the phone and stood staring unseeing at the wall, moving only to breathe.  Her thoughts, and the emotions that went with them, flashed through her mind like blurred pennants, and they cycled over each other, again and again, until Rupert’s shadow fell over the threshold of the door which Elisabeth had not bothered to shut.

            “Hello?”

            She waited until he stepped tentatively into view.  He stopped when he saw her standing by the desk, his face pale and leaden.

            Elisabeth made a small movement as if to go to him on the instant, but checked herself and drew in, and for a moment did not move at all.

            Then, instead of going to him, she moved slowly around the couch, toward the kitchen, so that she was facing both him and the open door.

            They stood for a long moment, wordless and apprehensive, before Elisabeth inquired coldly:

            “A brawl in a bookstore?”

            Rupert had no more ready a defense than Brian had.  His only answer was a mute tip of the head.

            “A _brawl_ in a _bookstore_?” Elisabeth repeated.

            With an obvious effort Rupert moved himself to answer.  “Well—I must say—in my defense, he st—”

            “I don’t care that he started it.  A brawl in a _bookstore_?”

            Rupert could not answer this, and she continued.

            “What were you thinking?  You could easily have killed him.  And I don’t necessarily want him to fight my battles, but I hardly think he deserves that much retaliation for trying to chastise you—”

            “In case you didn’t notice,” Rupert said, roused to anger, “he’s just fine.  And I wasn’t thinking about retaliation or chastisement or anything else—he hit me, and I had to fight.  That is all.”

            She stared at him, hardily, for a moment, and then said quietly:  “I get that.  But it doesn’t make it right.”

            His lips thinned taut.  “I don’t get the impression,” he said, “that you’re seeing the matter from my point of view.  But Brian got here first.”

            Elisabeth bristled.  “Brian,” she said, “has been here for me.  Even before he understood what was happening; and he does now, so he has no excuse.”  She added, quieter, “I owe him a lot.”

            Rupert lowered his chin, in what could have been a gesture either of shame or defiance; Elisabeth couldn’t tell.  The light from the open door behind him left his face in shadow.

            “He thinks you’re stalking me,” she said, with the faintest hint of humor in her voice.

            In response, Rupert gave a little hoot of a laugh, without raising his head.

            “He wasn’t reassured when I told him I asked you to come here.  I sent him home with a flea in his ear.”

            She could see his throat move in a heavy swallow.  “I didn’t mean to—this isn’t how I wanted to come.  I wanted—”

            Tears rose in Elisabeth’s eyes.  “It isn’t very much different,” she said, “from the other times you’ve come.”

            He gave a small, bitter laugh.  “Yes, I seem to manage to bring calamity almost every time....”

            “It isn’t the calamity,” Elisabeth said.  “It’s—my helplessness.”  She was going to elaborate, but her throat closed painfully and it was all she could do to keep her composure.

            His head sunk even further.

            She sniffed, took her glasses off and laid them down on the end table, then faced him again.  “Rupert: why did you come here?”

            He looked up at her, his face blank with surprise.  “You asked me to.”

            Evidently he had been expecting his response to be satisfying, for dismay crept into his face when he saw her begin to lose the battle with her tears.  He tried again:  “And I wouldn’t dare refuse you anything you asked.” He flinched visibly to see she had begun crying silently in earnest.  “I wanted—” his voice deepened in appeal— “to make anything right if I could.”

            At this last, her tears slowed, and with measured steps she went toward him.  He did not move as she approached, and stood silent meeting her eye when she stopped before him.

            She spoke, one small, simple appeal:  “Do you love me?”

            The dismay sharpened in his eyes.  After a moment he gave a small nod.

            With ten times the sharp efficiency Brian had used in his impulsive attack, she raised her small, square hand and slapped him hard across the face.  Then, breathing quickly, she subsided and waited for his reaction.

            Her blow had knocked his head to the side: for a moment, he held it there, eyes closed, then righted himself before her with gaze downcast.  At his sides his open hands moved convulsively once, then twitched and were still.

            She waited till she had his eyes before she said again:  “Do you love me?”

            There was a white-and-pink mark on his face the shape of her hand.  He sucked in his lips a moment, eyes bright, swallowed, and answered with his voice this time.  “Yes,” he said hoarsely.

            She hit him again, and again he made no move to resist, though she waited to see if he would anger.  His control was indeed fading; but it was grief, not anger, that was showing through.  He righted his head again, the mark on his face turning a blistering red, the brightness in his eyes urged to the most exquisite point of pain.

            She was weeping now.  “Do you love me?” she asked him, and did not know that the note in her voice matched that of the night he had forced her to beg for her life.

            “Yes,” he just managed to answer, and shut his eyes, waiting for her to hit him again.  But instead she reached out and gripped fistfuls of his shirt and clung there, weeping, for a moment; then finally allowed herself to flow to him, to let go his shirt and slip her arms around him, to burrow herself in his warmth and scent and hold him, to cry without courage.

            For the longest moment he did not embrace her in return, and she did not know why until she felt the faint, tentative touch of his shaking hand on her hair, and realized that the visceral trembling between them was not all her own.  After a moment he gathered her in closer and held her, rocking slightly, and they clung like that, neither of them knew how long.

            But when she lifted her head to seek his mouth, he resisted; he flinched away from her kiss with a small whimper, but she followed him insistently, and at the same moment began to urge them, with many tugs and nudges, down the hall to her bedroom.

            He struggled as if against a whitewater current—“Please—’Lis’beth—don’t—” but she had gained them momentum, and in the end they flopped together awkwardly onto her bed, and she rolled him over, clasping one of his hands in hers and pinning it down into the coverlet, and kissed him with force, and he drew a long, shuddering breath and kissed her back.

            But they could not sustain it; and at last she collapsed upon his heaving chest and spent the last of her tears, limp and exhausted, like a child.

            The exhaustion drew from them the urge toward drama, and they lay for a little while sniffing and swallowing and trying to think what to say next.  At last Elisabeth shut her eyes and let out a long sigh.  “I was afraid you weren’t going to come,” she murmured.

            “I was afraid to come,” he said, his free hand moving along her shoulder in tiny strokes.

            She left her eyes shut.  “I know.”

            Anything else they said would only highlight the looming truth that neither of them knew what they were going to do now.  To delay the inevitable, Elisabeth sat up wearily and plucked two tissues from the box on her nightstand, handed one to him, and blew her nose squelchily with the other.  “You’re still wearing your coat,” she said, with a little laugh.

            He lifted his head and looked down along his length; both his clothing and his burberry were badly rumpled, and there was a little tear in his coatsleeve where the shattering glass of the display case had cut it.  He wriggled up to rest his head against her headboard, looking at her; belatedly he remembered the tissue in his hand and began to mop lightly at the tearstains on his face.

            She took a small shivery breath and let it out in a sigh.  He looked up at her with the faintest of wry smiles.

            “I’m not sure what to do next,” he said.

            She broke into a pained little laugh.

            “I don’t suppose we’d have got even this far without Brian’s—er—inadvertent assistance.”

            She laughed again and wiped her nose with the wadded tissue.  “No, I don’t think that was the kind of use he meant to be to me.”  She looked at his face; his jaw was starting to swell and bruise over, and she could see the faint marks left from her own blows.

            “Should we try to talk, d’you think?” he asked tentatively.

            She gave a limp shrug.  “I don’t think I have any words,” she said.

            “Not even an apposite quotation?” he asked.  His wistful look went straight to her heart.

            “No...,” she said, “unless it’s Gerard Manley Hopkins.  _No worst, there is none_,” she quoted sadly; “_pitched past pitch of grief_....”  She lost the thread of quotation for a moment, sighed, and took it up again.  “_O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall, frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.  Hold them cheap may who ne’er hung there_.”  She thought she had used all her tears, but her eyes burned again and filled.  “_Nor does long our small durance deal with that steep or deep_....I lost my sanity for a while,” she confessed in a small voice, her brimming eyes cast down to her crossed legs.

            He said nothing and after a moment she looked up to see that he was looking at her, his eyes also wet.  There was a silence while they shared the gaze; then Rupert said:

            “I’m sorry.  I could have helped you.  I hurt you instead.”

            She broke the gaze, swallowed, and sat looking into her lap as before, letting his words sit between them.

            After a long silence, she said, seeking after meaning with each word:  “I loved you with everything in me that was good.”  She came to the end of the sentence without reaching the meaning she wanted, and ended up having to leave it there, helplessly.  She did not even know whether she was trying to form an accusation or a formula for comfort, or which she should attempt.  She was still thinking about it when he sat up and got up from the bed, moving slowly, like a man half again his age.

            He was at the door when she said, “Where are you going?”

            He turned, eyes brimming.  “Aren’t you sending me away?”

            She blinked.  “No.  What...Rupert—what—?”

            “You used the past tense,” he said softly.  “You said you ‘loved’ me.”

            She sat straighter, understanding.  “Rupert: it was a chronological past tense.  Not an absolute.”

            He swallowed, keeping his eyes on her face.  “Then I can stay?”

            “Yes,” she said, with a fragile steadiness.  “I want you to stay.”

            He ratcheted in a breath, fighting for, and winning, his composure by the skin of his teeth.  He moved slowly back into the room, taking off his burberry and laying it on the foot of the bed, and sat down achingly next to her, gripping his knees and breathing.  She scooted a little more so that she sat facing him, and then uncrossed her legs altogether and let them hang over the bedside next to him.

            After a moment he turned to her, and, hesitating at first, reached out two fingers to tuck a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear.  His hand lingered, to stroke the round of her cheek gently.  In response she moved to hug him again, without hurry or trepidation, and they sat at last, calmly embraced, free to untether their affection.

            “D’you think any of this is going to get easier?” she mumbled into his shirt.

            He lifted his lips from her hair to echo her quote— “No worst, there is none” —and she groaned.

            “At least,” she said, “we might be able to have some tea without disaster.”

            “Can it be real tea?” he asked, helping her to stand with him.  “Mr. Carnagey gave me some peppermint stuff that he said he keeps for his stomach.  I think it actually _gave_ me a stomachache.”

            “Yes,” she said, smiling; “it can be real tea.”

            They went out into the livingroom, and Elisabeth let out a little laugh.  “I’ve left the door open,” she said, “all this time.”  She went to the threshold and looked out.  “I don’t see your car.”

            “It’s parked in a visitor’s lot above North Oxford,” Rupert said ruefully.  “I lost my nerve and wandered through the city for a while.  To my cost.  I think.”  He rubbed his jaw.

            “You should bring it round,” she said.  “Before dark.”

            They decided after a moment’s conference that they should both go.  Elisabeth shoved on some sandals and grabbed a windbreaker, and they walked and bussed by turns through the city to where Rupert was parked, without hurrying and without saying much.  On the way back home they stopped at an Indian restaurant and got takeout, which, back at Elisabeth’s flat, they ate on her bed, piled under two afghans, with the cool spring air flowing in through the open bedroom window.  After their dinner, they stacked the empty containers on the edge of her nightstand, and Elisabeth changed into pajamas and washed for bed.  She lent Rupert a toothbrush, locked up for the night, and crawled under the covers, on the side that used to be hers in the days they had shared a bed.

            He joined her, hesitating only a little, for they were both so tired they could scarcely keep themselves upright.  Belatedly she sat up and reached to turn out the bedside lamp, but he said, “No—leave it on if you want.”

            “You don’t mind?”

            He shook his head, and she subsided back under the covers.

            Not quite touching, and each a little nervous at the fact, Elisabeth and Rupert nevertheless sank into an exhausted sleep almost at once.

 

*

 

In the middle of the night Elisabeth woke suddenly to find that the lamp was off and she and Rupert were in darkness.  She thought perhaps he had turned it off after all, and reached for the switch, but turning the switch produced no result.  The bulb must have burnt out, she thought.  But perhaps something more sinister was happening.  She struggled up to listen to her flat, waiting, breathing down panic.

            Nothing.  Except she became aware as she waited that her bedfellow was shivering uncontrollably in his sleep, making sounds in his throat that were not quite voiced.  She listened to him: he was not dreaming, she knew, only quaking under the unconscious threat gathering in his pulses: poor in durance, as Hopkins had said.

            Gently she eased a hand over his chest and embraced him—slowly so as not to startle him—and nestled a foot between his calves, drawing him closer.  She closed her eyes, drawing in his scent with her breath, and held him thus, and his shivering began to subside.

            It seemed to her then, as she drifted back toward sleep, that an old knowledge was uncovered for her: her love for him had not died, and would remain, whatever else happened.  In his sleep he turned to her and accepted her embrace, and she fell back asleep sharing her warmth, and imbibing his.

 

*

 

Morning light, and human movement, drew Elisabeth awake.  Her head hurt a little, and she wondered why until she remembered all the crying she had done the day before.  She left her eyes closed, gradually wakening to the fact that he also was beginning to wake: and to touch her.  His hand drifted steadily over her stomach with the inexorability of a glacier and the warmth of a small sun, and he was nuzzling her, his day’s growth of beard gently sandpapering her cheek; he was altogether warm and ineffably male, and without having to think Elisabeth responded in one long indrawn breath, throwing her arm free of the covers to crest the round of his shoulder.

            The increasing urge to embrace gathered in them both, waking them fully, and she opened her eyes to meet his at close range; the expression in the hazel depths was one of mingled uncertainty and longing, and together they shared a look that said:  _Well, if it’s going to happen, it may as well happen now_....

            He bent again, to brush a kiss along her cheekbone, trailing it down to her ear and the soft skin under her jaw; his hand meanwhile found its way under the hem of her little T-shirt.  She moved her hand and renewed her knowledge of the angle of his shoulder, the set of his ear, the soft ruffle of his hair.

            With uncanny dexterity his hand moved south to work her underwear off her hips.  She helped him, and helped herself afterward to a caress of his skin under his T-shirt, which he pulled away from her long enough to strip off.  She kicked her underwear out from under the covers onto the floor.

            She had thought she had not forgotten the taste of his skin, the feel of the hard curves of his body, but now that she had them again she delighted in the fresh sense of them, at first cautiously, then riotously, urgently; and judging from his alacrity his sensations were but little different.

            With a faint thought as of _wonder if this still works?_, she slipped a hand down between them and grasped him, smoothly, firmly: he made a little sound, the least of his responses, and began to fumble for the handle of her nightstand drawer.  There was the sound of Indian takeout cartons tumbling to the floor.

            “Shit,” Rupert said.  “I think you’ve got cold mulligatawny on your floor now.”

            She broke into a laugh all the more unexpected for its heartiness.

            She helped him with the condom.  Neither of them now could keep their breath, and they hurried together, fumbling awkwardly, to reach fruition; she threw her head back with a voiced gasp, and he settled into her, moving in close, short strokes.

            Their mutual urge shifted from a simple desire to one in which each strained in parallel for closeness with the other: gripping, lifting, frantically caressing, they sealed themselves together with equal parts clumsiness and finality.  By the time it was finished, they were both shaking and clinging to one another with a desperation that left yesterday’s drama completely behind, a desperation too absolute even for tears.

            She recovered first, eyes watering into her temples from the shock, and looked up at the ceiling, regaining her breath and feeling him, in all his weight, trembling in every fiber.

            “Oh, God,” he uttered softly against her hair.

            He subsided upon her, shaking, and lifted his head to touch his face to hers.  She lifted a hand to stroke his hair.  “I missed you,” she whispered.

   “Oh God.I missed you too.”His hand moved in a small caress along her ribs.“Elisabeth...you’ve grown so thin.”She had never heard his voice so small.She held him close and quieted him: she could comfort him now, now that they had met on equal ground.

            “Shh,” she murmured.  “It’s just flesh, Rupert.  It’ll come back.  It’s guaranteed to, you know: I’ve hit the magic age of thirty.”

            He did not laugh at her joke.  Instead he lifted his head to look her in the face.  “I want to see you in full health again,” he said.

            “Stay here,” she said, stroking his cheek, “and help make it happen.”

            He offered her a faint smile.  “You don’t have anything pressing today?”

            She thought.  “I have some work in the afternoon.  But it needn’t take long.  How about you?”

            “I—”  He stopped, looked over at her alarm clock, and went pale.  “Oh my God.”

            “What?  What, Rupert?”

            “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.  I have to go.”

            “What is it?”

            “A conference call.  Nobody has a fixed number but me.  They’re all going to call my flat in Bath today, and if I’m not there—”  He broke off.

            She said reasonably, “When do you have to be there to take the call?”

            “If I leave right this minute,” he said, tensely, “I might just make it.”  But instead of getting up he buried his face in her shoulder and groaned.

            Elisabeth, without really having to think about it, found herself accepting the situation with a wry fatalism.  “Well, you’d best get up then,” she said, prodding him.

            “I’m sorry,” he groaned.

            “C’mon, Rupert.”  She heaved at him from beneath, and finally he raised himself from her and sat on the edge of the bed, feeling around under the covers for his boxers and cleaning himself up at the same time.  She picked up her underwear from the floor, skinned into it, and grabbed her kimono from the chair.  “I’ll make you some tea for the road.  You go wash up right quick.”

            She padded into the kitchen to make the tea, and was thankful to hear the sink in the bathroom start.  By the time Rupert had pulled on yesterday’s clothes and shrugged into his burberry, she was ready with a go-cup of tea, the tag and string hanging out from under the cap.  He took it from her gratefully, and looked down at her, cocking his head ruefully.  “It really is too bad of me to—”

            She shut him up with a kiss, and he used his free arm to gather her into a strong embrace.  They stood like that a long moment, defying time; then he pulled away and said, “I’ll come back.”

            “Oh, Rupert,” she faltered, “please don’t—don’t promise—”

            “It’s not a promise,” he reassured her hurriedly, “it’s just—just—I’ll come back.”

He moved quickly to the door and opened it.  “If you need anything, call me,” he said over his shoulder.  “Please.”  She nodded, and managed to blurt out as the door was closing— “Godspeed—”

            And then the door was closed, and he was gone.

            Elisabeth smoothed down the front of her loose-belted kimono, breathed out heavily, and turned to the livingroom at large.

            “I can do this,” she said quietly; “I can do this.”


	2. Chapter 2

Rupert Giles hurtled down the M4, swearing softly between his teeth every time he was forced to ease up on the accelerator to accommodate a slower vehicle.  If these gormless turkeys made him late for his phone call he’d...he wasn’t sure, but it would certainly be no White-Rabbit revenge.

            He screeched to a final stop in front of his flat, burst through the door over the rune he had not bothered to erase, and dove for the phone, which was already ringing.

            “Hello?” he gasped.

            “Hi, Giles,” Willow said.  “Anybody else on yet?  —Why are you out of breath?”

            “I—only just—got home,” he said, panting.

            “Where did you—oh.  You went to see Elisabeth.  How...did it go?”

            “I’m not sure yet,” Rupert said truthfully.

            “Well, you stayed the night, apparently,” Willow said.  “That’s...of the good, right?”

            “I’m not sure yet,” he repeated.  A slow weight, wholly unrelated to his race for the phone, had settled over his breathing.

            Mercifully, a new call sounded over the line, and Willow had to abandon her gentle inquisition to welcome Xander and Andrew to the conference call.

            More joined, person by person on every available extension, and the chattering went through Rupert’s head until Buffy called the “meeting” to order and briskly called on each to give his or her report.  Belatedly he snapped to attention just before it got round to him, and dug out his notebook to begin writing down the work he would need to do based on each report.

            When called on, he reported on his situation and enumerated the files he had created, verifying as he did so the three new Slayers’ names mentioned by the others, to add later.

            In what seemed a short time considering the effort he had made to get home, the meeting was adjourning, with everyone carrying off new assignments and signing off more or less cheerfully.  It reminded Rupert slightly (though he did not say so) of the discharge of Council business, only without the spirit of the British Empire to lend it grandeur.  Which was just as well: Rupert liked his duty unvarnished.

            “Hang on, Giles,” Buffy said.  “I need to talk to you after.”

            “Oh,” Willow said.  “Okay, well, I can ask you about that other thing later.”

            “Thank God,” Rupert said, and Willow laughed.

            “I won’t forget, you know.”

            “I know,” he sighed.

            “Later, Giles—Will—Dawn—Buffy,” Xander said.

            Within seconds Rupert and Buffy were left alone on the line.

            Buffy got right to the point.  “There’s a man floating around Europe who contacted me a few days ago.  Has some information.  Wants to give it to me, but he also wants to talk to you.”

            “Council?”

            “Dunno.  My spidey-sense didn’t pick that up.  I’m pretty sure he knows what the Council is—or was, anyway—but I can’t get anything more than that.  I’m supposed to call him tomorrow and set up a meeting between the three of us this week.  Where should I tell him to go?”

            Rupert thought.  “Well...it ought to be someplace easily reachable from our respective positions, and big enough for us not to attract notice.”  He hummed a moment, ignoring the apprehension threading through his nerves.  “Paris, perhaps?”

            Buffy snorted, but agreed.  “Paris it is.  Got a specific place in mind?”

            Rupert mentioned a Left Bank cafe that would answer the purpose, and made a note of it.  “I’ll call you later tonight or tomorrow with the new sitch,” Buffy said.

            “Right,” Rupert said, and they ended the call without ceremony.

            A meeting with a possible ex-Council member, a Paris cafe, his strung-out self, and Buffy, Rupert thought: what could possibly go wrong?

 

*

 

Elisabeth put her face into the hot shower spray and left it there for as long as her breath would hold.  There were any number of things she ought to get done today, not the least of which involved a research stint in the library; but there was one thing that would not keep: she had to go and see Brian.

            She looked forward to it as to an afternoon of tax audits.  Brian was angry with her, no doubt about that.  Elisabeth shut off the water and reached for the towel.  She shouldn’t have said that to him, about Austin Grey.  But he, she thought, towelling her hair roughly, shouldn’t have thrown a punch at Rupert in a bookstore.  Men!  Both of them had looked at her blankly when she incriminated them, as if (woman-like) she had hared off on an irrelevancy.

            “I’ll give him irrelevancy,” she muttered, buffing each leg dry before stepping out of the tub.  Whether she meant Brian or Rupert she did not bother to try and make clear.

            Still muttering, she slipped back into her kimono and went to find some clothes.  The irritation served its purpose as distraction until she was nearly fully dressed, and she looked up to catch her wet-haired, slightly bedraggled reflection in the small mirror over her dresser.

            The thing was, she was going to have to tell Brian that Rupert was still in her life: and he was going to take it hard.  Hence the little shake that was going in Elisabeth’s knees.

            “I shouldn’t have to feel like Judas about it,” she said savagely to her reflection, and laid the mirror flat on its face atop the dresser.

 

*

 

In the afternoon the phone rang, a welcome distraction from the unwholesome drifting around his flat that Rupert had been doing since lunch.  Work wasn’t holding his attention, and he had—to his own exasperation—developed another block about calling Elisabeth.  With nothing he _wanted_ to do, no appetite for what he _had_ to do, and blocked from what he _needed _to do, Rupert had wandered from room to room in his flat, tripping over the Guardian, who made no sound but glared at him from five feet below.

            “I _can’t_,” he protested, over the cat’s continued stern look.  “I can’t call her.”

            Voicing it had revealed it for the whine it was.  Rupert rolled his eyes at himself and looked toward the phone, sitting small, black, and malignant on his desk.

            That was when it rang.

            Rupert was relieved to go and pick up, but his relief got a puncture when he heard the voice at the other end.

            “So,” Willow said, “tell me what happened.”

            He froze a moment, then retorted, “And what if I say no?”

            “I’ll do a Vulcan mind-meld on you or something.  Or send Xander to Bath to beat you up.”

            She was only half-kidding, Rupert knew: he could hear Resolve Face in her voice, and decided to give in.

            “I went to see her,” he said.

            “And?”

            “It was…bad.”  He sighed, fingering his jawline.  “I met her best friend in an Oxford bookshop and he tried to beat me up.”

            “Oh,” Willow said.  “Is he okay?”

            “Of course he’s okay.”  Rupert glared at the prints on the wall.  “He’s fine, he’s jack-dandy.  That’s not _my_ fault.  Some passersby stepped in.”

            “Are _you_ okay?”

            “Bruise on my jaw.”

            “I’m betting Elisabeth wasn’t happy.”

            “Nobody’d give you good odds on that one,” Rupert said austerely.

            Willow snorted.  “You’re not being very cooperative, here.”

            Rupert tucked one hand under his phone-arm in a defensive gesture Willow couldn’t see.  “I don’t know what else you’d expect.”

            She sighed.  “Giles…you can come down outta the tree, okay?  There’s not a war on, not like before, and nobody wants to hurt you.  Well, except for Elisabeth’s best friend….”

            “And Buffy.”

            “Only occasionally.  And Xander didn’t mean half that stuff he said when we were drunk.  And—” she gave a diffident laugh— “there was that little time I tried to kill you, but, in the past, okay?”

            Things had to be bad if they were smiling over the time Willow tried to kill him.  “You’ve forgotten someone,” he said sadly.

            “Oh?  Who?”

            “Elisabeth.”

            “Oh.”

            There was a small silence, then Willow said:

            “Do you want to talk about it?”

            He didn’t.  But the longer he let the others figure it all out by themselves, the more egregious the rumors would grow.  More unbearable in the long run, and anyway Willow, who understood what it was to have done something unforgivable, was the best person to tell.  Rupert put his backside to the desk and crossed one toe over his planted foot.

            “I think,” he said cautiously, to start, “she’s taking me back.”

 

*

 

Numbly, as if every cell in her body had been magnetized, Elisabeth strode down St. Aldates with eyes blind to everything but the turn that would take her to St. John’s Church.  For the time it had taken to get out of Brian’s neighborhood, she had wandered in more or less a straight line, but once she reached the center of the city she had chosen a direction.

            Without pausing for hellos at the tiny receptionist office inside the parish-hall door, she climbed the stairs to Mother Anne’s office and knocked faintly at the frame of the open door.

            “Come in, I—” Anne swiveled in her chair.  “Elisabeth, how nice to—oh, dear—what’s wrong?”

            She jumped up and guided a pale and shaking Elisabeth to a seat next to her desk, got her a cup of water, and drew her own chair close.  “Tell me—what’s happened?”

            Elisabeth shook her head, unable to speak.  She took a few sips of water and at length began hardily:  “I thought I’d come here and get it all out of the way.  If I’m going to be disowned by all my friends I thought I’d better get it over with at once.”

            Anne remained unflustered.  “Why do you expect me to disown you?”

            “Why shouldn’t you?” Elisabeth was dimly aware that besides sounding hysterical, her voice had lost the support of her breath.  “Brian did.”

            “And what happened with Brian?”

            “He…I….”  Elisabeth stopped.  “He says he ‘can’t be my friend and watch me do what I’m doing,’” she quoted in a rush.  “I knew he’d be angry but I didn’t think he’d—”  Her eyes stung hot, and she took another sip of cold water.

            “Why is he angry?” Anne asked her quietly.

            Elisabeth kept her prickling eyes on the rim of her paper cup.  “Because I took Rupert back.”

            “Ah,” Anne said on an indrawn breath.

            There was a small silence.

            “Are you?” Elisabeth said finally.

            “Am I what?”

            “Going to disown me.”

            “For taking Rupert back?”  Elisabeth dared to look up; the priest’s eyes held a glint of grim humor.  “Of course not.  I rather expected it.  Tell me what happened.”

            Falteringly at first, then in a stronger voice, Elisabeth told Anne how Rupert had returned to Oxford; how the bookstore brawl happened; how both Rupert and Brian had appealed to her for clemency; how Rupert had, more importantly, shown his grief at what he had done to her; how he had then spent the night, and how they had re-consummated their relationship that morning.

            “And Brian,” Anne responded, “is angry because you did this.”

            “Well, I think he’s angry that I’m having any truck with him at all; but yes.”

             Anne sat back in her chair and reached out to uncap and recap a pen one-handed.  “I don’t think Brian is going to disown you,” she said finally.

            Elisabeth turned aching eyes to Anne’s face.  “You weren’t there.  You didn’t hear what he…the things he said.”

            “Oh, I have no doubt about the language he used,” Anne said gently.  “But I’ve got to know Brian a little in the past weeks.  I don’t think he has, in his heart, any serious intention of disowning you.”

            For the first time Elisabeth’s lip trembled hopefully; she firmed it.  “You think so?”

            “I do.  For one thing—” Anne sat up and tugged over a box of tissues in case Elisabeth should need them— “he knows perfectly well that if he forced you to really choose between him and Rupert, and you chose him, it would be a cheap victory that he couldn’t live with.”

            Elisabeth took a tissue, though she didn’t yet need it, and turned this new thought over.  “Maybe,” she said.  “But he really _hates_ Rupert.  I didn’t realize it before.”

            Anne gave her a pursed smile.  “Well, that’s a problem that won’t be solved quickly, unfortunately.”

            Something in Anne’s tone made Elisabeth look up at her face.  “Do you? Hate him, I mean.”

            The priest let out a heavy sigh and sank back in her chair.  “No.”  She sighed again.  “No.  These things aren’t simple; and—” she cocked her head, staring into the middle distance— “even thoroughly knowing the situation and the people doesn’t make it easy….”  Her eyes focused again and returned to Elisabeth’s face.  “I haven’t met Rupert.  I have some knowledge of Watchers, but it’s painfully limited and I couldn’t use it to help make an evaluation of what he’s done.  But I do fancy I know what I see of him in you.  And yes…he has made me angry.”

            The fluttering in Elisabeth’s nerves fell still.  It seemed for a moment impossible to tell whether the certainty of shame had fallen upon her for what she had done, or for what Rupert had done.  She broke their gaze and looked into her lap, thinking hard; then with an effort raised her eyes to ask:

            “Do you think it was wrong, the choice I made?  To take him back—into—into my bed and all?”

            The priest was silent a moment, but did not look away.  “I’m not going to give you any false reassurances, Elisabeth,” she said finally.  “You know better than I.  What do you think of it?”

            Elisabeth dropped her eyes to her lap again.  “I…I don’t know.  I thought it would happen gradually, and it—didn’t.  I was always going to take him back, you know.  I told Brian that.  Of course, if I’d told him that sooner he might not have…but then he might have gone to Bath and tried to commit—  I don’t want to be protected from Rupert,” she said, suddenly fierce.  “If I can’t manage it myself, then _I_ should be the one to send him away.”

            “If you can’t manage, what?” Anne probed, softly.

            “Being partnered with—” Elisabeth stopped, and this time the tears spilled over.  She drew a shuddering breath and went on, dabbing at them with the tissue.  “It isn’t the physical part of what he did that hurts me so much,” she said through the ache in her throat.  “Brian keeps going on about him terrorizing me.  That isn’t—that wasn’t the point, it never was the point.”

            “What was the point?” Anne asked in a near-whisper, as Elisabeth smudged at her face with the tissue.

            “He—willingly believed—that I was—that the evil in me was the strongest.  He set himself against me as if he had never known me—as if he had never said to me, ‘I know you are human’….”  She stopped to put down the water and take off her glasses so that she could weep silently into the tissue.  After a moment she drew a distressed breath and resumed.  “He didn’t know how much it meant to me that he—trusted me, when I couldn’t trust myself.  And then he took that away.”  Elisabeth plucked a new tissue from the box.  “I could die like that, I suppose—but I could never live like that.”

            “I don’t think you’ll have to,” Anne said.  Hearing the quiet strain in her voice, Elisabeth looked up.

            “You won’t need Rupert to maintain your trust in yourself.”  There was a hard shine in the priest’s eyes.  “You regained it already.”

            Elisabeth shook her head, almost frightened.  “But I didn’t,” she said.  “You saw what happened.  You saw me lose it all.”

            “You would not have come back if you had not found your foundation again.”

            Elisabeth shook her head more vigorously.  “That isn’t what happened.  All that happened was, I let go and…went through with the dying,” she finished, rather lamely.  “There wasn’t anything triumphant about it.”

            The shine in the priest’s eyes had not abated, but a little smile now played about her mouth.  “My dear,” she said, “you sit here in a Christian church, with a cross around your neck, with Sunday’s Eucharist prayers hardly cold on your lips—and you’re trying to tell me that nothing could have been born of the death you had?”

            For a fleeting moment, Elisabeth felt able to share Anne’s smile; but fear clamped in again.  “What if it’s not finished?  I don’t think it’s finished.  I haven’t got a boundless trust in myself—I don’t know if I’ve got _any_.  You don’t know—”  She broke off, and muttered, “I seem to keep having to die like this.”

            “Well—yes,” Anne said.  “We all do it more than once.”

            A long, soft silence descended upon the vicar’s office while Elisabeth thought this over.  At last she asked, tentatively, “So, are you saying that what Rupert did was—”

            “Oh, he betrayed you,” Anne said.  “You will both have to grieve for that.  I meant that—the damage he caused—might not be irredeemable.  Egypt and Israel were saved from a famine.”

            “But Joseph still had to forgive his brothers.”  Elisabeth completed the priest’s thought with a small, grim smile.

            “Yes,” Anne said.

 

*

 

Rupert idled outside the door of the café at which he had agreed to meet Buffy.  It looked like rain, and he would blend in much better if he went ahead inside and sat down; but restlessness kept him at a pause, unwilling to reach for the door handle.  Paris always made him restless—he had once glibly told a Watcher friend long ago that it made him over-attentive to too many sides of his own personality.  That friend was dead years ago, killed in the field long before the First Evil’s purge.  Rupert had felt a vague relief at the time that he had not troubled to deepen the friendship.  Remembering it now, he wondered how many times he had been cheated out of human spiritual touch—how many times he had cheated himself out of it, for the sake of the calling.  And had not Buffy proved over and over that the calling did not necessarily require such a sacrifice?

            “Giles?  _Giles_.”

            Rupert blinked: standing suddenly before him was his erstwhile Slayer, dressed modishly in a suit and long white leather coat.

            “You okay?” she asked, and though the tone was hardly tender, his spirits rose a little at her solicitude.  But then she continued.  “You look all zombie-like and sluggish.”  She turned away without waiting for his response and opened the door to the café.

            So much for restlessness, Rupert thought: and remembered dismally that Buffy had done her share of sacrificing connections.  “Nice to see you, too,” he muttered as he followed her inside.

            They chose a table by a window, through which they could observe the street outside and identify their contact, if and when he showed.  A waiter appeared; Rupert ordered a cheese-and-fruit plate and a glass of wine, in French.  The waiter gave him a small regal nod and turned to Buffy, who said, in English:  “Oh, I’m not really hungry.  Give me a—_café au lait_.”  Unprepared for the waiter’s response, she leaned involuntarily away as he scowled at her and uttered a few vehement words that, though in French, needed no interpretation.  “Giles,” she hissed across the table, “what did I do?  Did I order roast puppy or something?”

            Rupert turned to the waiter and placated him with, “_Un café américain_,” and a little shrug as if to say, “what can you do?”  The waiter sailed off, clearly still in high dudgeon.

            “What did I do?” Buffy repeated.

            “You ordered a _café au lait_,” Rupert said, with a sardonic smile, “which is _exclusively_ a breakfast drink.  It’s the middle of the afternoon.”

            Buffy stared indignantly at him for a moment, then said, “I think you picked France on purpose.”

            “Well, you asked me,” Rupert said, swallowing a smirk, “and I picked a venue equidistant from Rome and Oxford.”

            “You call Paris equidistant?” Buffy began, but stopped.  “Oxford?  I thought you lived in Bath.”

            “I—” Rupert hung fire for a moment.  “I do live in Bath,” he answered her finally.

            “Then why—”

            “Elisabeth lives in Oxford.”  He confessed it quickly and _sotto voce_, keeping his eyes on his hands unfolding his napkin.  He kept his hands moving, draping the napkin neatly over his lap.

            “Oh,” Buffy said.  After a silence, she added:  “I thought Xander said you guys were…you know….”

            “What?”  Rupert looked up.

            “Broken up.”

            He dropped his gaze again.  “We were.  We—” Rupert cleared his throat— “have revisited the issue.”

            “Meaning?”  There was a note in her voice that could have been humor, could have been danger.  Rupert looked up to search her face, but could make nothing of her serious, raised-eyebrow expression.  How tired he was of this dance, of the eternal giving nothing away, the stiff-armed push-me-pull-you struggle.

            He said:  “Meaning I went to see her, and it turns out we may be able to repair our relationship.”

            “Is she the one who hit you?”

            Involuntarily Rupert’s fingers went to the fading bruise on his jawline.  “Her best friend did this.”

            Their order arrived before Buffy could question him further, and Rupert set to work on the cheese and fruit, in lieu of attempting to talk.

            Buffy stole a bit of his cheese while he was sipping his wine.  “So are you moving to Oxford then?” she asked, chewing.

            “I really haven’t thought that far,” Rupert said; and he hadn’t.  He submerged his startlement and concentrated on his plate.

            Buffy stole a slice of pear.  “You should,” she said.  “I worry about you.”

            “Get your own fruit and cheese!” Rupert said.

            “Giles, I think the waiter might try to hurt me if I order something else.  And don’t change the subject.  I worry about you.  Everybody else has a partner.”

            “So we’re switching to the buddy system?”  Rupert quickly took the strawberry Buffy’s eyes had lit on and took a generous bite.

            “Hardy har.  It’s not like that’s the worst idea ever.  And Elisabeth could look out for you in case something went wrong, so maybe you should think about teaming up with—”

            “Is that our contact?” Rupert said, staring out the window at the man who had sat down on a bench with a copy of _Le Figaro_ and was attempting to read it nonchalantly despite the rain.  “Not very professional, is he.”

            Buffy snorted loudly, which caused the passing waiter to dart a glare at her.

            With rather more nonchalance than their contact was exhibiting, Buffy and Rupert paid their bill and mouched out the door.

            “I thought you didn’t like Elisabeth,” Rupert said, just before they reached earshot of the man.

            “I don’t have to,” Buffy said briskly.  “We’ve established she isn’t evil, and even if you can’t make it together she can at least be a contact.  Besides….”

            But the man stood up then, looking straight at them, and the argument was abandoned.

 

*

 

Elisabeth left Mother Anne’s office with a leaden calm settling over her spirits.  She finished the errands on her list almost placidly; ate a lonely supper of tuna salad; nailed down some research points in the library (feeling a small tremor of worry should Brian appear and either expostulate with her or ignore her); and went home to a sound sleep.

            She woke in the morning with a plan—or not so much a plan as a heavy certainty of what she would do.  She dressed with special care, making sure she was prepared for every eventuality of weather, packed her satchel with books, snacks, and bottled water, and set off, more or less calm but for the surface trembling that would only deepen if her plan worked.

            When she arrived at Brian’s flat, she checked to see if his car was in its place.  It was; but that didn’t mean he was at home.  Well, if he wasn’t he would find her waiting when he got back.

            She knocked at his door, deliberately:  _Shave and a haircut, six bits_.  Because she was listening carefully, she could hear his footsteps creeping to the door; there was a flicker at the peephole, and for a moment she thought perhaps he had not been as angry as she thought and would open the door.  But there was a silence that stretched past a minute, and Brian did not open the door.  It was what she had been afraid of.

            She knocked again, same rhythm, a little louder, and was convinced that despite the lack of response Brian was just inside the door, within full earshot.

            “I’m not going away until you let me in,” she said loudly.  “If you think I’m kidding, Brian, you’ve got another think coming.  You’re going to trip over me every time you cross this threshold until you let me in and talk to me.”  She stepped back and positioned a dusty milk crate for a strategic seat right next the door.  “I’ve got books,” she said, “and drinking water, and snacks, and something to wrap up in during the night.  And—” she glanced at her watch— “I’m going to knock on this door every hour on the hour.  So get ready for a siege.”

            Without any further ado Elisabeth suited the action to the word.  She set down her satchel next to her milk-crate seat and drew out a bottle of water and _Busman’s Honeymoon, _leaned back against the wall, and settled in to read.

            Half an hour later she paused in the slow savor of the Dowager Duchess’s diary to look up at the door.  It didn’t really surprise her that Brian was being this stubborn.  She submerged all disappointment and went back to reading, taking a sip of water.

            At the hour she knocked on the door again, to no avail, and repeated her challenge; then sat back down and returned to her book.

            The light changed to that of long afternoon, and a spat of rain began to fall outside the breezeway.  Elisabeth read on, stopping only to sip her water and to knock at the door.

            She sat down with a heavy sigh after the fourth fruitless knock, and for a moment had no heart to pick up her book again.  She had committed herself to staying the night if need be, but beyond that she wasn’t sure how well she could hold out.  Her bladder was beginning to hurt, and every minute that passed only made it worse.  With another sigh she picked up her book and tried to ignore the gathering urgency.

            Lord Peter was losing the fight for her attention when the locks began to snap impatiently.  Hurriedly Elisabeth stowed her water in her bag and tried to look casual as the door opened.  Brian stood, silent and sullen, looking at her.  She gave him a pointed questioning look:  with a deep dramatic sigh he stepped back holding the door and cast his gaze back inside, waiting.

            She swept up her things and brushed past him into the flat, but did not stop except to drop book and satchel on his loveseat.  She could veritably hear the question gathering as he shut the door and moved behind her, so she paused in the bathroom doorway and announced, “Excuse me.  I have to pee.”  And she shut the door with a sharp snap.

            When she came out she saw that he had drifted awkwardly across the room to fetch up against the little dining table he kept in the kitchen area, usually piled with papers and books and today also precariously holding the remains of his lunch.

            “So,” Elisabeth said.  She realized all at once that she had given more thought to gaining admittance to Brian’s flat than what she would say when she had it.

            “So,” he repeated glumly, then raised his head without looking at her.  “Elisabeth, what do you want?”

            “I want,” she said, slowly to give herself time, “to get you back.”

            He was partially turned away from her, and so it was all the more startling to see his eyes rise to her face in an expression naked with hope and remorse.  She went on before his hope could turn false.

            “But I’m not going to choose between you and him,” she said.  She thought a few seconds, ransacking her mind for more of the words that had ranted through her consciousness the past twenty-four hours, but she found in the event that all of them no longer served.  “And that’s…all, really,” she finished, lamely.

            He had lowered his face again, his expression obscured.  He muttered something.

            “What?”

            “I said,” he repeated, a little louder, “you didn’t lose me.”

            Against her will the tears rose in her eyes.  Her hand found the zipper of her of her windbreaker and toyed desperately with it.  “You said you didn’t want to see me again.”

            “I didn’t mean it.”  His voice was still soft, but then he raised his head and spoke stronger.  “But I think I was right in saying I can’t watch you try to be with him.”

            She drew a hardy breath.  “And I think I’m right in saying you’re going to have to suck up and deal.”  She met his eye with as much intrepidity as she could muster.  “I appreciate what you go through for me, but _I’m_ the one suffering the hardship of putting the pieces back together.  And I’m the one who suffers when you attack him.”

            “I know that,” he admitted, dropping his gaze.

            “You can’t hurt him without hurting me more,” she insisted.

            “I know.”

            “Or is it—” her voice went unfortunately reedy, and she cleared it without success— “or is it me you want to hurt?”

            He looked straight up at her, stung.  “No!”

            She remained silent, and he repeated:  “No.”

            She couldn’t look at him any more without tears.  She looked away, breathing hard and even, clinging to her composure.

            There was a long silence, in which the currents of Elisabeth’s thought shifted and the air between them changed, so that she could no longer remember which of them was waiting for the other to speak.  At length, Brian’s voice startled her to attention.

            “I saw it.”  His voice was small and defeated.

            “What?”  She looked up.

            “I saw it,” he repeated, his shoulders bowed.  “That thing.  That thing that was pretending to be you.”

            Elisabeth half-shook her head, uncomprehending; then, as Brian’s meaning sank in, an echo of the old fear rose in her chest and she straightened to stare at him.  “You saw the First?” she whispered.  “When?”

            “While you were gone.”  His voice was very soft.

            “Oh, Brian....Why didn’t you tell me?”

            “I tried to,” he said, still not looking at her, “when you came back.  But it didn’t seem the thing to do somehow.  To remind you of all that.”  He drew a long breath and shivered.

            Elisabeth was silent a moment as new comprehension flooded in.  “No wonder you hate him so much,” she murmured.

            He opened his mouth suddenly, as if to protest; but shut it just as quickly and lowered his head again.  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

            The unqualified note of apology in his voice moved Elisabeth instantly to go to him and put her arms around him.  He hugged her back, rocking gently; and Elisabeth’s restraint gave way, in one choking rush of tears and trembling.  Brian comforted her, one hand smoothing her spine, the other holding her close.

            At length she sniffled and breathed deep, turned her head to face the air a little, her cheek against his chest.  “Was it bad, while I was gone?” she asked him.

            She felt an involuntary shudder go through him, which was answer enough.  “I’m sorry,” she said.

            They stood together for a long moment, reclaiming their mutual equilibrium.  Finally Brian asked, tentatively:  “So...how is this going to work?”

            She leaned back her head to look at him, and gave a little sigh.  “Well, you don’t have to try to like him.  Just...don’t tear up any more bookstores, if you love me.”

            His face twisted in a wry little laugh.  “If it helps at all, I really didn’t plan that.  And...I promise not to—challenge him to a duel or anything overblown like that.”

            “That’s enough for me,” she said to his eyes.

            “Right,” he said, breathing out and relaxing under her touch.

            “Okay.”  She let go of him.  “Well...I’ve got some work to do, and I expect you do too.”

            He nodded ruefully.  “I’ve got a paper that won’t wait, unfortunately.  Perhaps we could go out and drink sometime this week.”

            “Sounds good,” Elisabeth said, masking her trembling with a brisk zip of her windbreaker.

            “I’ll call you,” he said, as she moved toward the door.

            She nodded, and reached for the door handle.

            “Elisabeth?” he said, and she paused to turn and look at him.

            He shifted his awkward stance.  “I just want you to know that...I did realize I can’t write your life for you.  Apart from its being—well, wrong—I suppose—I mean, I figure I’d probably make a right balls of it.”

            She gave him a small, grave smile.  “Like George Chapman finishing Marlowe’s _Hero and Leander_.  Only Chapman had no self-awareness.”

            A little smirk tugged at Brian’s mouth.  “How’s that?”

            Elisabeth trailed her hand along her forehead and declaimed:  “Oh! Hero!  I have found you at last!  Our love can never be denied! —Oh, Leander!” —she switched trailing hands— “I love you and nobody else but you!  And our love can only be the _greater_ when we decide not to have premarital sex!  And I will now go on about the _importance_ of abstinence at _great length_ and you will _listen_ to me because you love me so much!”

            Brian was laughing hard by the end of her recital; but he finished with a bittersweet smile.  “God, I hope you don’t think I’d write a paean to abstinence!” he said.

            “I have no fear of that,” Elisabeth said with a grin as she opened the door.  “I’ll see you later.”

            “Take care of yourself,” Brian said.  “I’ll call you.”

            She closed the door gently on their last understanding look, and went her trembly way back to the library.

 

*

 

“Giles..._Giles_.”

            Something was interrupting the dark heavy cloud of pain and sleep that lay over his consciousness—sharp little pat-slaps whose location he traced eventually to his face.  He tried to retreat back into the familiar painful sleep, but the voice wouldn’t let him.

            “Giles, come on.  I need you to wake up.  I don’t know how to call for an ambulance in French.”  The slaps came harder.

            Rupert groaned.

            “Oh, good.”  Instead of abating, Buffy’s slaps grew harder still.

            “Son of a bitch,” Rupert muttered, and dragged a hand up in an attempt to ward off Buffy’s medical attentions.  “Ouch.  Get off me.”

            Memory returned to him:  he was lying in a damp Paris alley, and Buffy was bending over him.  A great pain was gathering into a heated knot over his left eye.  “Motherbloodyfucking son of a _bitch_,” he said.

            “That’s it, Giles.  Tell me how you really feel.”

            “Fuck you.”

            Unwillingly, he opened his eyes fully to look at her, kneeling next to him in the shadows.

            “You know,” Buffy said, conversationally, “It strikes me as odd that you managed to fight a whole slew of uber-vamps with hardly a scratch, yet get knocked out by an incompetent rogue Watcher.”

            “Fuck you,” Rupert said again.  “Am I bleeding?”  He put a tentative hand up to his forehead.

            “A little, not too much.”

            “Where is the said incompetent rogue Watcher?”

            “Vamps got him at the other end of the alley.  Snapped his neck, didn’t even bite.  Guess they didn’t like him playing both sides against the middle.”  She grunted, helping to drag him into a sitting position.  “Not that the little bastard would have fared a whole lot better with me.  Well, at least those girls are safe.”

            “And the vamps?”  Rupert made a bid to get to his feet and had to sit down again briefly before trying again.

            “Dusted.”

            “Right.”

            Buffy hauled him gently to his feet, letting go of him only when she saw he had full balance.  “You know,” she said, casting a meditative glance down the alley, “I’m starting to wonder if this isn’t a tip-of-the-iceberg kind of deal.  I mean, if we’re going to have to start keeping files on Watchers who’ve gone underground.  This can’t have been the only rogue one.”

            Pinching at the pain spot on his brow, Rupert glanced in the same direction and winced thoughtfully.  “Yes,” he said, “the scope of our endeavor is likely to grow beyond our expectations as time goes on.”

            “Meaning,” Buffy said, “that we’re in over our heads?”

            He gave her a sardonic smile.  “Way,” he said, and turned to stalk out of the alley.

            Buffy snorted and followed after.

            “Not,” he added, “that we had any choice.”

            She jumped a stride to get abreast of him.  “Yeah,” she said.  “Now let’s get to my hotel room so I can doctor you up.”

            “I don’t need doctoring up.”

            “Shyeah.  Right.”

 

*

 

The first day after her reconciliation with Brian wasn’t difficult:  Elisabeth spent the morning in the library and the afternoon hunched over her laptop at home, ate well, slept.  Her eyes troubled her a little, but she put it down to the fallout of passed stress and thought nothing more of it.

            Rupert hadn’t called, but that was nothing new.  On the other hand, the ribbon of her knowledge had pulled all the way through her hands and gone, so there was no telling where he was, or what he was doing, or whether he was safe.  Elisabeth told herself she liked it that way: far better to wonder about him like any other normal person than to suffer and _know_.  Once she went so far as to pick up the phone and dial his number in Bath.  She let it ring five times before giving up; she didn’t try again.

            The next day was unsettled, but she refused to pay it any mind.  Brian had apologized; there was no need to keep remembering the sudden dizzying precariousness induced by their quarrel.  That half-dream she had had in the morning was just that, a dream:  she had made love to Rupert tenderly, nourishingly, in her half-awake state, and it was only the aberration of her nerves that had turned it into a nightmare in which she reached behind his neck with her hands and snapped it.  She had come awake then, on a panicked gasp, and lain staring at the ceiling and breathing slowly until her heart rate went down.  Her drowsy brain was bound to play tricks on her, this close to the event.  It meant nothing.  Indeed, that day was as productive as any she’d had since her illness; she wrote five very good pages and cooked herself a supply of potato curry soup.

            The next morning’s prolonged qualm of nausea was a sign of dehydration.  Elisabeth drank two extra glasses of water, and it subsided.

            On the other hand, looking in the bathroom mirror was no easier than it had been.  The glaring evidence of blemishes aside, Elisabeth could find no shade of expression, no style of movement that did not mock her.  “Great,” she told her reflection that afternoon.  “If I’m not dangerous, I’m ignominious.”

            The sarcasm didn’t help.  That evening, she rummaged in her desk for some thumbtacks and tacked her two extra towels up over the bathroom mirror.  They did not quite meet over the center, giving her a flicker of reflection every time she passed.  After a few hours of her nerve-ends flinching, she dug out a flat sheet she wasn’t using and replaced one of the towels.  The end of the sheet draped into the sink; she tucked it back so that she could still wash her hands and brush her teeth.

            When Brian called later that evening she told him she was in the throes of a paper and couldn’t go out; which was true.  She was in the throes of her paper, alone at home, just her and the paper and her draped bathroom mirror.  Like a Victorian house of mourning, she thought with a little laugh, only the drapings weren’t black.

            That night she exhausted herself, jerking awake at the point of dropping off, over and over.  Over and over she told herself that it made no difference, that she would be safe, or not, even if she fell asleep.  _I don’t think I have any trust in myself_…_I seem to keep having to die_….

            _We all do it more than once_….

            Elisabeth choked on a dry sob, and a few minutes later dropped, spent, into a heavy sleep.

 

*

 

“Sit.”  Buffy pushed Rupert down onto the edge of her hotel bed.  She pulled a pencil-thin flashlight out of her jacket pocket, twisted it on, and held his chin so she could shine it in each of his eyes.  He winced.

            “Good.  No concussion.  That’s a plus.”  She dug in another pocket and pulled out a vinyl roll-bag that turned out to be a cunning first-aid kit.

            He snorted.  “Since when did you become Clara Barton?”

            “Shut up,” she said briskly, unrolling the bag over the bed with a sharp snap.  “Who’s got the antibiotic ointment, here, you or me?”

            Rupert heaved a deep sigh and more or less submissively let her swab at his throbbing brow with an alcohol wipe.  “Is it still bleeding?”

            “Stop moving your head.  Yes, it’s bleeding.  You keep moving around.”

            “I’m not moving around,” Rupert said, making it true.

            “—_now_,” Buffy said.

            She got out a small adhesive bandage shaped to grip the edges of cuts together.  “Now hold still,” she told him.  He raised his eyes in a vain attempt to watch her apply the bandage to his forehead.  “Stop raising your eyebrow, it interferes with the grip,” she said.  He blew out his cheeks and dropped his gaze to her shoes, which were lightly coated with dust.  “There,” Buffy said finally.  “You’ll have a nice purple goose-egg on your forehead.”

            “Good,” he said.  “It’ll match the one on my jaw.”

            “That one’s fading,” Buffy said, cocking her head to look at it judicially.  She went over to the table and began loading a hand-towel with ice cubes from the bucket.  “So why did Elisabeth’s best friend hit you?” she inquired, casually.

            “Because I caused Elisabeth a lot of pain one way and another, and he wanted to pay me out for it,” Rupert said shortly.  “What’s going to happen to our man in the alley?”

            “Nothing,” Buffy shrugged.  “He’s dead.  Those other two Watcher-types carried him off.”

            “They took him away?”

            “They muttered something about having to take care of their own, even if he crossed a line.”  Buffy grunted, giving the makeshift ice-pack a firm twist.  “Just as long as they don’t interfere with me taking care of _my_ own.  Crossed a line,” she repeated darkly.  “If they pick up where he left off they’re gonna _see_ some crossed lines.”  She came over to him with the ice-pack and put it into his hand.  “And you did it again. Changed the subject.”

            Rupert ignored that.  “So all of this took place while I was out?”

            “Yep.”

            He dropped back on the bed and wriggled up to put his head on the pillow, arranged the ice-pack on his brow and closed his eyes.  “If someone told me I’d have an encounter in an alley in Paris, I wouldn’t have thought it’d be with a flipping iron fire-escape ladder.”

            Buffy snickered.

            “It’s not funny.”

            “Well, you have to admit there was a certain kind of dorky elegance in the way he brought that thing swinging down into your face—okay.  I guess it’s not funny yet.  I’ll wait till the swelling goes down.”

            Rupert dropped his two-fingered salute back onto the bed at his side.  “Much obliged,” he said, eyes still closed.  He could veritably hear her still smiling.

            Unfortunately Buffy’s obnoxious mood had not worn off.  “So,” she said, “you gonna bring Elisabeth back a present from France?”

            “I hadn’t considered it,” Rupert said without opening his eyes.

            “Well, I’m not Elisabeth, but if it were me I’d be a little miffed that my boyfriend went to Paris and didn’t come back with so much as a T-shirt.”

            “Elisabeth doesn’t even know I went to Paris,” Rupert said.  Which was a mistake.  Buffy’s nibbling attempts at provocation flipped suddenly into outright indignation.

            “She doesn’t know you are in Paris?  She doesn’t know where you are?”

            “Well—”  The ice-pack slid off his forehead, and Rupert was forced to open his eyes to retrieve it.

            “Giles!”  Buffy was glaring at him.  “You mean to tell me you’ve been three days in France and your girlfriend has no clue where you are or what you’re doing?”

            Rupert tried glaring back at her but it hurt his forehead.  “We don’t keep each other on a leash.  She knows I’m working, I don’t have to call her.”

            “But she could be worried about your safety.  Didn’t you think of that?”

            “My safety isn’t an issue,” Rupert muttered, leaning his head back to position and re-position the ice-pack on his forehead.  “Besides,” he added, to forestall any remark on his current condition, “I haven’t had time to get to a phone.”

            It was a lame excuse and he knew it.

            “If you had a cell-phone,” Buffy said, “that wouldn’t be a problem.”

            “Oh for God’s sake:  do we have to go over all that again?  I don’t want one of those contraptions.  They cause brain tumors, you know.”

            Buffy came over to the bed and took away his ice-pack.  “Giles,” she said, “enough excuses.  Willow and Xander are purchasing cell-phones this week.  If everybody has one we can have a proper conference call.  And you can call Elisabeth so she doesn’t have to wonder if you’re dead.”  She dropped the ice-pack onto his solar plexus, making him grunt.

            Buffy swept to the door and opened it.  “I,” she said, “will be right back.”

            Rupert was left for the next twenty minutes wondering fretfully what Buffy was about to do.  Did she plan to go and purchase him a cell-phone right then and there?  But that would be infeasible—Buffy’s French was mangled at best, and if he had to get one of the damned things, he wanted to pick it out himself.  After all, his biggest objection to getting a mobile was the principle of the thing.  Or did Buffy plan to call Elisabeth and bear tales?  _In that case, thank you very fucking much, Buffy_, Rupert thought.  “Oh, hell,” he muttered aloud, “my head is splitting.”  In fact, his headache was an ironic sort of solace, considering how badly he knew he was behaving and how helpless he felt to stop it.

            What he wanted, Rupert thought, was to go home.

            Buffy returned with an air of quiet satisfaction shortly after that.  “What?” Rupert said.

            “I went down and made travel arrangements for tomorrow,” Buffy said.  “It wasn’t as hard as I thought.  Turns out you can get people to do almost anything for you if you are polite and ask nicely.  And also if you explain that you took French in high school, only the high school was directly over a Hellmouth and now doesn’t exist any more, not to mention that you somehow developed mom-hair after you left, and that probably accounts for the fact that you didn’t know _café au lait_ was a breakfast drink.”  There was a very faint hint of a smile on Buffy’s lips.  “The clerk helped me reserve a train ticket, which you will use in the morning.  I will take you to catch the Chunnel train, and you will go to London and purchase a cell-phone.  Then you will go directly to Oxford, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, and reassure your girlfriend that you are not dead and do, in fact, love her.  Then you will call me on the cell-phone that you purchased earlier in the day so that I can put your new number in my speed-dial.”  She sat down on the edge of the bed next his side.  “There.”

            There was very little objection Rupert could make to this plan, even if he had wanted to.  “I thought you didn’t like Elisabeth,” was the only feeble thing he could say.

            “I’m warming up to her,” Buffy said, with a familiar broad wryness that Rupert found oddly comforting.  “Now get some rest.”

            For the rest of the night, Rupert drifted in and out of sleep, listening to Buffy pushing about papers and speaking softly on her own newly-purchased mobile, making arrangements for the Slayers they had found.  She would duplicate her notes, he knew, and give him the originals for his files when they left in the morning.

            “We’ll always have Paris,” he murmured at one point; and Buffy snorted.


	3. Chapter 3

Rupert arrived in Oxford in very good time.  Buffy’s plan had worked to a T.  He had returned to London, where he had purchased a shiny silver mobile with a color screen that lit up with an eerie blue light when folded open.  The nice lady who sold it to him had taken pity on him and helped him enter crucial numbers into his speed-dial menu.  He had retrieved his car and buzzed confidently up to Oxford without mishap.  Even his head was cooperating; it hurt much less than it had the night before.

            He knocked briskly on Elisabeth’s door, feeling an oil-and-water mixture of buoyance and apprehension.  It was just possible that Buffy was right, and that his welcome would not be exactly warm.  In fact (he thought as he waited for her to open the door) it would be far, far more than he deserved if she were glad to see him.

            It occurred to him suddenly that she was not answering.  He knocked again.

            Again no answer.  He would have to call her.  He glanced up and down the street, trying to remember where the nearest phone box was.  Belatedly he recalled the existence of his mobile and took it out.  He folded it open and squinted at the controls.  How the hell did you call someone on this thing?  There was a little “menu” icon in the corner, but he didn’t know how to get to it or how to retrieve Elisabeth’s number from the call list.  Perhaps he could just dial the number in.  He tried it, but nothing happened.  “Fuck!” Then he saw what he suddenly remembered had been described as the “send” button.  He pressed it, tentatively, and found himself in business; he could hear Elisabeth’s phone ringing faintly inside her flat.

            The answering machine picked up, and he started slowly back down the steps, formulating his message.

            “Ah—yes—Elisabeth—it’s me, Rupert….I—I’m back in Oxford, and would like to see you.  I stopped at your flat but you weren’t home.  I—erm…I’ll try at Magdalen and see if you’re there.  When you get this, you can call my new number…ohh, fuck, I don’t remember what it is.  Well, I’ll call you back—maybe stop by your flat again if I can’t find you….I—”

            The beep cut him off.

            Rupert wandered across the Bridge and into Magdalen College.  No one, he discovered to his dismay, had seen Elisabeth that day, nor was she expected to turn up.  He worked his way from library to common room to seminar room, a heavy foreboding growing in the pit of his stomach.  When, an hour later, he had turned up nothing and no one who knew anything of Elisabeth’s whereabouts, he began to panic.

            He called her flat again.  Still no answer.  He left no message.

            _This is what I get for not calling her before_, he thought frantically.

            It was time to eat crow.  He went to the porter’s desk and asked to be directed to Brian Whitaker’s rooms.

 

*

 

He could hear Brian’s voice in the corridor as he approached, laying down the law with vivacity to a student:  “…Do not, for the love of God, ask me again what I want.  What I _want_ is for you to apply your reasoning powers to a subject you may say is drudgery but which is quite meaningful in and of itself and therefore does not require your paltry passion.  It also does not require my imprimatur on every sentence.  Every time I want a paper written to my _personal_ specifications, I write it myself, _capisce_?  If you use the inevitable subjectivity of marking as an excuse for poor argument, I shall beat you with your own notebook.”

            Rupert waited, masking a little smile, outside the door until Brian and the student had done; presently, the student ducked out, very red-faced, clutching his bag.  Rupert turned his indulgent smile briefly on the boy and advanced to knock on the lintel.

            “Come in,” Brian said, without looking up from the papers he was shuffling on the table.

            Rupert came in a few steps; it did not take long for Brian to raise his head and see him.  He had the remains of a magnificent black eye fading healthily on the right side of his face.

            “Oh,” Brian said blankly.  “It’s you.”  He went back to shuffling the papers, keeping a wary eye on Rupert.  “What do you want?”

            Rupert briefly considered saying that what he _wanted_ was Brian’s attention to a subject that displeased him, but caught himself in time, thank goodness for small mercies.  “I…I’m looking for Elisabeth.  I’ve been unable to locate her.  It’s…” he stopped himself saying _troublesome_— “worrying.”

            Brian raised his eyebrows above the rims of his reading glasses, and finally took them off.  “What,” he said, “she’s not at home?”

            “No,” Rupert said, “and no one round here has seen her at all today.”

            “Well, she wouldn’t be here today, she hasn’t got anything she has to come in for.”  Brian frowned.  “And you say she’s not at home?”

            “Yes.  That is what I said,” Rupert said tightly.  A fresh tendril of panic was rising in his chest.

            Brian considered.  “Well…that’s odd, but it’s not completely out of the way.  There are a number of places she could be.  Have you checked…?”

            “I’ve been all over the college.”

            “Yes, but there are a few hidey-holes she might—”

            “I know the hidey-holes,” Rupert said impatiently.  “I once read History here, you know.”

            “Really?”  Brian blinked.  “You’re a Magdalen man?  I thought you were Christ Church.”

            “Christ Church!” Rupert snorted.

            “Just an idea I had,” Brian muttered.  “Any rate, I don’t see any reason to worry unduly.  I mean, Elisabeth does this occasionally.  Disappears, I mean.  It’s never anything truly bad.  Though, well, there _was_ that one time she was kidnapped and interrogated by the Council of Wankers, may-they-rest-in-peace—”

            Rupert gave him a level look.

            “—oh, and there was the time she took off to stay at your place all by herself without any medical help, to wait out the apocalypse.  And—well, that time she was holed up in her flat completely gaga when y—when the First Evil got through with her….”  Brian stopped; an inward look of gnawing worry came into his face.  “This isn’t really helping, is it.”

            “No,” Rupert said, succinctly.

            “I don’t….”  Brian made a small movement, as if he were going to say more, but checked it.  Instead he churned his hand through his dark-sandy hair, thinking.

            “When did you see her last?”

            “Few days,” Brian said.  “You don’t think…?”

            “I don’t know.”  Rupert sighed, smoothed a hand down his burberry.  “I’m not sure how to—I don’t know what to try next.  I don’t want to crowd her—but if—if she’s—”

            “I’m sure she’s all right,” Brian said hurriedly, now looking really alarmed.  “Tell you what—” he glanced at his watch— “I can’t leave here for a few hours, but if you go back to her flat and see if she’s returned—and have a look about the city—maybe see if she’s at the church—St. John’s, you know—and call me—no, perhaps I should call you—”

            Rupert pulled out his mobile and opened it.  “I have my number—well, I just got this bloody thing today, I don’t know where the number is.  Perhaps I’d better call you….”  He fussed with the keys, hoping to make the mobile’s number magically appear on the screen.  “Dammit!”

            He could feel Brian looking at him.  Self-consciously he flipped the mobile shut and looked back at him.

            “I’ll give you my number—here,” Brian said, tearing off a scrap of paper and scrawling on it.  “So what happened to your head?” he asked, glancing up as he wrote.

            “Paris, the city of lovers,” Rupert said dryly.  “Where some people kiss in cafés and others hit you with fire-escape ladders in dark alleys.”

            “Ah,” Brian said, polite to the nth.  “That’s a shame.  Well, here you are.”

            Rupert took the paper from him and folded it into his burberry.  “Thank you.  So you think I should start back at her place, then.”

            “Your best bet,” Brian said.  He didn’t have much of a poker face, Rupert reflected; even he could see the worry beneath the calm.

            “I’ll call you,” he said.

            Brian made one sharp uplift of his chin for a nod, and Rupert made good his escape.

 

*

 

Back at Elisabeth’s flat, Rupert knocked firmly and waited.  When she did not answer, he made up his mind to jimmy his way inside.  Bugger law, propriety, and personal independence; Elisabeth could be seriously hurt somewhere.

            He dug in his pocket for his old set of picklocks while reaching for the door handle, expecting to meet the resistance of a locked door.  Instead, the handle turned easily and the door opened without any resistance at all.  Staring at it, Rupert felt his low-grade panic deepen to heavy foreboding.

            Cautiously he pushed the door further open and slipped inside.  “Elisabeth?” he called, voice low.  There was no movement visible, except his own in the little mirror above the coat-hook rank in the foyer to his right.  The mirror, he saw, was mostly covered by strategically-placed gloves and scarves; looking at it, all Rupert could see was one of his own eyes.  He turned away from it and moved slowly, quietly into the flat.

            He saw and heard nothing.  There was a stale fug of unwashed dishes, or decomposing kitchen garbage, or illness, or—

            “Elisabeth?”

            No answer.

            She was nowhere: not in the untidy kitchen, or the livingroom, or the utility alcove.  He moved on quickly to her bedroom; she wasn’t there either.  On her nightstand stood a half-glass of water; the floor was littered with crumpled tissues and clothing, and the sheets lay tangled where they had been flung.  The top of the dresser held a scattering of hair accessories, makeup, and pill bottles, among which lay the framed mirror, face down.

            It felt like a nightmare, he thought, a nightmare moving at a predetermined speed through empty rooms.  He turned and went out of the bedroom, pausing in the corridor to poke his head into the bathroom: and there she was.

            She was hunched motionless in the corner between the tub and the wall, in front of the toilet, bare feet half-sprawled awkwardly across the faded linoleum, one limp hand resting along the tub’s edge.  As he watched, paralyzed, she canted her head back to look at him and moved her lips in a wan attempt at a smile.  “Hey,” she said.

            In an instant he was on his knees in front of her, stretching hesitant hands to touch her shoulder, her hand.  “Elisabeth.  Are you—?  What—what is this?”

            She wasn’t quite meeting his eyes.  “The old complaint,” she answered hoarsely, “—more or less.”

            “How long have you—has it been like this?”

            She was responding favorably to his touch, but still wouldn’t quite look him in the eye.  “Oh…only a day or so.”

            Rupert kept his own counsel about that:  only a day of illness was not enough to produce those shadows under her eyes, or reduce her hair to lank, unwashed ribbons that retained the marks of every touch.  He said nothing, merely looked away briefly, pursing his lips, and let out his breath in a hiss.  Only a day was still a day too long.

            “D’you think you can stand?” he asked her, tentatively.

            A faint look of worry came over her face, but she said, “I think so.”

            Rupert stood, shucked off his burberry, and tossed it out into the hall.  Rolling up his sleeves, he bent again to help Elisabeth slowly to her feet.  Guiding her with one hand, he turned on the shower taps with the other and felt the spray, waiting for it to warm.  He helped her to undress, slowly peeling her out of her sour T-shirt and working the cuffs of her sweatpants off her ankles.  Naked, she looked even more unloved, pale and scrawny, than he had remembered in their brief moment together days ago: his eyes stung, and he blinked them clear so that he could help her step unsteadily into the tub, and hold her up under the hot spray.  A hard, visible shudder went through her as the water spilled over her body; she put out a hand to brace herself against the tiled wall.

            He was reluctant to let go of her, but she assured him that she could stand and wash by herself, so he backed away and went out of the room, saying:  “I’ll be right nearby if you need me.”  Aching for something to do, he went into her bedroom and (after a brief moment of indecision) stripped the sheets off her bed, gathered all her dirty clothing, and carried it in to drop in front of her washer to wait till her shower was done.  He collected her garbage and put it out.  He opened the windows and set the ceiling fans going, rickety-click, rickety-click below the noise of the shower.  Then he went looking for some clean clothing to put her in; finally he dug out a large T-shirt that had once been his and a pair of faded black leggings, along with a ratty blue robe that he was sure was secondhand.  Back in the bathroom, he realized with dismay that all her towels were dirty—he glanced around desperately and saw that the one clean one was tacked up over the mirror.  With a sharp yank he pulled it down; one tack skittered across the floor, and he bent to pick it up so that Elisabeth’s bare foot would not find it.

            He was waiting with the towel when she shut off the water and turned to push aside the curtain.  He draped her in the towel, and was ready with each article of clothing when she reached for it.  Finally he held the robe while she worked her arms through the sleeves, and guided her out of the bathroom, grabbing her comb on the way.

            No words passed between them as he settled her into the nest of blankets and pillows he had made for her on the couch.  He was not, therefore, certain whether it was a good sign that she let him sit at an angle behind her and take the comb to her clean wet hair.  He got a glance at her face for a moment while her head was turned; her eyes were closed, the damp lashes lying in a trembling curve over her cheek.

            Her hair combed and shining, she moved like a tired child to burrow further under the blankets, curling up to leave him room to sit, and closed her eyes.  “Thank you,” she murmured.

            He cleared his throat.  “How long since you’ve eaten?”

            She did not open her eyes.  “Don’t remember.”

            “I’ll make you something.  Some soup?”

            After a brief hesitation she nodded, and he got up and went into the kitchen.

            He had to pause for a moment, hands braced against the counter, before he began: overcome for a moment by the shame of having resented her interest in his welfare only to find that her welfare had suffered outside his own interest.  Making her soup was so far short of the least he should do for her that he could only put his hands to the task with all his care and attention.

            While the soup was cooking he scalded a week’s worth of dirty dishes in the sink, and put in the first load of laundry to wash.  When at last it was hot, he ladled a generous portion into a mug, heavy on the broth and light on the noodles, and tasted it gingerly before adding salt and pepper.  Elisabeth was out of saltines, so he carried the mug out alone to her on the couch.

            She was sleeping fitfully, and startled at his touch; but she recovered quickly and sat up to receive the soup from his hands.  Encouraged, he sat down close to her and watched her as she took tiny sips from the mug.

            “I wasn’t sure you’d come back,” she said, blowing lightly across the steaming surface of the broth.  “I heard you knock the first time, then I heard you call.  So I crawled out to the front door and unlocked it in case you came back.  I think I must have looked pretty funny,” she said, with a wry grimace.

            He sat miserably for a moment before answering.  “I’m so sorry,” he said at last.

            She looked up at him; her face was still tired but her eyes had lost a little of that studied concentration upon inward pain.  “My dear, what for?  It isn’t your fault I was ill.”

            “Isn’t it?”  He studied his guilty hands.  “I could have kept in better touch with you.”

            “You were working,” Elisabeth said.  “And, I presume it was fruitful work, too:  you’ve got a new bump on your head.”

            He brought a hand up vaguely to touch the painful lump.  “Yes.”  Then:  “Oh! damn!  I forgot.”  He got up and began to root in the pockets of his burberry for both his mobile and the scrap of paper with Brian’s number.  He found them and let the coat fall back in its place draped over her chair.

            “Whose cell-phone is that?” Elisabeth asked.

            “Mine,” Rupert muttered.  “Just got the bloody thing today.  Hardly know how to work it.  Let’s see….”  He squinted hard between the keypad and the scrap of paper, and found with an uncertain thumb the send button.  As it rang, he stood and paced the length of the couch.

            “Who are you calling?”  Elisabeth sat looking up at him, both hands curled around her mug of soup.

            “Brian.”

            She frowned.  “Brian who?”

            But he did not answer her, for Brian had picked up.  “Hallo?”

            “Ah—yes.  Rupert Giles here.”

            “Did you find her?”  Brian’s voice was urgent.

            “Yes,” Rupert said.  “She was at home, curled up sick in the bathroom.  She was too ill to answer the door the first time.”  He caught sight of Elisabeth’s expression changing from bewilderment to comprehension to faint pique.  “No, she’s all right, now, I think,” he went on.  “Would you like to speak with her?”

            He held out the phone to Elisabeth, who was glowering mildly at him.  She took it, trading it for her mug.  “Hello?  Hi, Brian.”

            Rupert carried the mug into the kitchen to wash it, shamelessly eavesdropping.  “Yes, I’m all right now…Well, I _was_ all right; and by the time I wasn’t it was too late to…No, it was just a relapse of the old trouble, that’s all.  It creeps up sometimes…No.  _No_.  You didn’t…it was just….” She sighed deeply.  “I know…I know.  Yeah.  Oh, that’s not necessary, Brian.  Rupert will be here….” The pique returned.  “That’s not necessary either.  I don’t need babysitting….Yes…Well, if you’re both still tag-teaming me by the end of the summer, I’ll have something to say about it.  Gosh, I hardly know what’s worse, the pair of you lamming each other in public, or in league to keep tabs on my health….Oh, I intend to get plenty of mileage out of it.  You’re welcome.”  She listened for a moment, and her next words were indistinct below the water Rupert was running.  By the time he finished washing up, started a new load of laundry, and returned to the living area, Elisabeth was concluding the call.  “Yes.  Yes, I’ll see you then…I love you too.  Bye.”  She searched with her thumb, as he had, for the right button to end the call, her face a mask of—concentration, or grief, or fading anger, he could not tell.

            He sat down gingerly on the other end of the couch; she moved her blanketed feet so that he could cradle them in his lap.  He began, just a little, to relax.  “Brian duly reassured?” he inquired.

            “Yeah,” she said, playing with his mobile.  “He says he’s not letting a day go by without my speaking to one of you and affirming I’m all right.  Geez, Rupert, this thing is loaded.  When did you get it?”

            “This morning.  Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on him?” he said, tentatively.  “He was very worried.”

            “It’s even got a camera.  You can take pictures of rare demons and such.”  Elisabeth finally heard his words and lowered the mobile to look him quizzically in the face.  “Men are amazing,” she said finally.  “I get all psyched up for the Code Duello, and what happens?  I wind up with a pair of Jewish mothers.  _You never call, you never write—_  In stereo.  It’s truly…what’s the word I want?”

            He gave her a level look.  “Appropriate?”

            Her shadowed eyes dropped, she sucked in her upper lip, and went back to playing with his mobile.  For a long moment there was only the sound of Elisabeth’s fingers ticking on the keys and the little phone’s notes of response.

            At last Rupert cleared his throat and said gently:  “Elisabeth.  What happened?”

            Her fingers hesitated on the keys, but she did not take her eyes from the little screen.  “Nothing happened.”

            He tossed his head and opened his lips to remonstrate, but she lowered the phone and forestalled him.  “Nothing,” she repeated, “happened.”  Her mouth was small and drawn in an expression he recognized as shame.  “That’s how it works,” she said.  “Nothing happens.  I win some small battle or other, I get through some stressful time, I go back to my life.  Nothing happens.  And then I get sick.  It doesn’t have a rhyme or a reason to it.  That’s how my messed-up mind works.”

            “It seems like you’ve just explained the rhyme and the reason,” Rupert said quietly.

            She moved her head suddenly, as if trying to wriggle out of imaginary bonds.  “It isn’t—there isn’t any secret to it,” she said.  “That’s what I meant.  There isn’t any key that will bring a solution.”

            Rupert hadn’t asked her for a key to the solution; but he kept quiet and watched her face, until she sighed again and went back to the distraction of his new phone.

            He sat silent, holding her feet in his lap, thinking.  He had looked forward to coming home, to seeing her again; and now he had what he wanted—even now, despite everything, a sense of home was seeping warmly into his skin.  But Elisabeth, whose home it actually was, enjoyed no such benefit.  He let his eyes wander around the flat, taking in her desultory, and in some places abandoned, housekeeping.  A memory niggled at his consciousness but did not come clear.  He sat quietly thinking, cradling her feet.

            After some time the dryer’s buzzer sounded.  Rupert got up, putting Elisabeth’s feet gently off his lap, and went to unload the warm fresh towels and sheets.  He carried the lot to her bedroom and made up her bed, folding the towels and setting them aside.  The ceiling fan had freshened the air; Rupert smoothed the covers, turned on the bedside lamp, and began straightening her dresser.  He righted the mirror and centered it carefully on the dressertop; swiveled it up a little so that he was looking into his own face.  The lump over his left brow was indeed looking rather festive, as Buffy had predicted, and there were faint shadows under his eyes, an echo of the smudges under Elisabeth’s.

            Shadows.  The mirror.

            He glanced around him, remembering.  The mirror in the entry, blocked with gloves and scarves.  This mirror, laid on its face.  And….  Slowly, Rupert took up the folded towels and carried them into the bathroom.  He set them on their shelf over the toilet and then stood looking at his reflection in the portion of the mirror that was not draped with the flat sheet.

            _I will bring her darkness to the surface.  I will make you watch me destroy her._

            Silently, almost without an instant of change, every cell in Rupert’s body polarized into cold, unadulterated rage.

            He reached deliberately for the flat sheet and snapped it free of the thumbtacks pinning it in place.  The tacks went flying; one of them landed in the tub and skittered hollowly over the porcelain.  He picked up the other and set it on the counter.  He dropped the sheet in a heap on the damp floor.  After a momentary glance at the thin hard set of his mouth in the exposed mirror, he turned and went into the livingroom, moving without hurry.

            Elisabeth was in the act of closing his phone and putting it down on her battered coffee table.  As he reached her, she was rearranging the blankets around her so that she could curl up in a new position.  She looked up at him and paused.

            “What is it?” she asked.

            “Will you come with me a moment?”

            She took in his grim face, his outstretched hand, and after a moment laid hers in it, frowning.  “What is it?” she said again.

            He made no answer, merely began leading her back toward the bathroom.

            A few steps from the bathroom door, she understood and halted.  “No,” she said, trying to wrest her hand from his.

            He turned, not letting her go.  “You can’t put this off,” he said.  His hand went out to grasp her shoulder.  She planted her feet in response.  “Not the best idea you’ve ever had, Rupert,” she said through set teeth:  but her control was slipping; Rupert could feel the tremors in her muscles.  Her pupils, as she met his eyes, were wide with danger.

            He was committed now, however.  “You can’t wait,” he repeated gruffly, and began to tug at her shoulder and hand.

            “No—”  She braced against him, panic stirring in her face.

            He let her use her weight for a moment, to unsettle her balance, then pulled her forward in a surging tug.  She was forced to move forward a few steps, almost to the threshold, before she stopped him again.

            “No—let me go—”  Her voice stopped short of a real cry, keeping their struggle private and confined to the quiet of her corridor, and his passion intensified into real pain.

            “Please,” he said.  His hand gripping hers stung with the heat of friction; his eyes sought hers to plead.

Their struggle convulsed in the doorway, and even as he drew her in bodily she was turning to escape, a small cry breaking from her throat.

“No—no—look, you have to look—”

“Please—”

He was strong, hatefully strong, it seemed to him; it was difficult but not impossible to gather her in and hold her, shaking pitifully in his arms.  “Please don’t make me,” she whimpered; but she had stopped struggling and instead now clung to him, hiding her face, as if she could force him by her very helplessness to protect her from her own reflection.

“You have to look.”  Rupert did not recognize his own voice.  “Please, Elisabeth, just look.”  He shifted her in his arms, and by moving quickly he managed to work her round till she was facing the mirror, his head against hers so that she could not turn away.  “Look in the mirror.  Look in the mirror.  It’s yours, this is yours, it belongs to you, it’s your birthright.  Own it.  Take it back.”

“I don’t want it,” she whispered, shutting her eyes.

“Yes you do.  Yes you do.”  His voice had dropped to match hers.  “Or what else are you doing here?  You won.”

“That’s bullshit,” Elisabeth uttered, her face screwed up against the sight of her own reflection.

“Bullshit, is it?”  Rupert’s voice shook, and he held her closer, breathing hoarsely.  “I came back and you were still standing.  It was already over, and you won.  Where’s the First?  Is it standing here now?  No, it’s you, because you won.  You won.”

A tearless howl broke from her lips and she turned to burrow herself hard into his shirt.  “Then why do I feel like this?” came out in a muffled wail.

At the moment she was not the only one hating her own reflection:  Rupert shut his eyes and laid his cheek against her hair, and held her while she shuddered.

“Because you paid a price,” he said softly, after a moment.

She drew long breaths, and shook hard in his arms; he could tell that she was not crying, and it occurred to him for the first time to wonder if he’d just done the very thing to make her really ill.  “I’m sorry,” he said against her hair.

In the midst of her shaking she began to smooth her small hand consolingly against his spine; and the last of the rage failed Rupert altogether.  He gathered her closer, as much taking comfort from her as she was from him.  She was clinging to him, he felt, but not as if he were hers to hold.  He wanted that back, wanted her well and bold and claiming him again—his partner, his equal.  How bitter it was that he had played such a role in taking that boldness away from her.  His eyes closed, he smoothed her hair, over and over; it was still faintly damp from the shower.

At last she drew a long quivery breath and shifted in his arms.  He opened his eyes to see their reflection; she was daring a small look at herself over the crook of his elbow; then she raised her gaze, and their eyes met in the glass.

She pulled back, and he released her so that they were face to face.  “I need to use the toilet,” she said, still shivering visibly.

He felt a fresh pang of anxiety.  “Are you going to be sick?”

“No,” she said, with what could have been either a smile or a grimace.  “Just the usual.”

“Ah.”  Awkwardly, he edged aside to clear her path to the toilet.  “I’ll go put on the kettle, shall I?”

“Sounds good,” she said.

“Right,” he said, and beat his retreat.

He filled the kettle and put it to heat on the stove, then went to start the next load of laundry.  He glanced about the flat once, furtively:  the First might not be here, but there was plenty of residual memory hanging about Elisabeth’s home.  A proper smudge of the place might not be a bad idea, Rupert thought, his eyes on the heating kettle.

It occurred to him after a few minutes that although he had heard the toilet flush and the tap run, Elisabeth had not emerged from the bathroom to join him.  In fact, the whole flat was eerily silent.  Moved by a sudden fright, Rupert jolted himself down the corridor and peeked into the bathroom doorway, fearing the worst.

Elisabeth was standing at the counter, very still and grave, looking her reflection in the eye.  As he watched, she stretched out a hand (her fingers scarcely trembled) to touch the mirror:  a faint flare of condensation rose briefly where her warm fingertips met glass.  They stood that way, silent, the glass Elisabeth and the warm living one; and in the sad eyes of her reflection Rupert saw her accepting, absorbing the enormity of her burden.

Standing in the doorway, Rupert swallowed and swallowed and felt his throat close on an urgent spume of tears.  He had done this to her.  He had made her burden intolerable, he had helped to make her hateful to herself, he had left her to suffer alone; and the mere impossibility of ever making it right, ever making himself right, was enough to suffocate him.  He swallowed again and choked down a breath: it made a harsh sound in the stillness, and she turned to look at him.

The movement of compassion on her face scalded him into full-fledged weeping, which he tried in vain to stop.  He brought up a useless hand, as if it could press back the grief into its hiding place, erase her having seen it, efface himself from her presence so that she could finish making peace with herself.  But she moved toward him, and he cowered away, blinded by his own hot, stinging tears.

“Shhh,” she said, gathering his hands and pulling them down and away.  He rested back against the doorframe and cried.  “Shh, Rupert,” she whispered.

Something soft and thick was brushing his face; he regained his vision enough to realize that she had withdrawn her hand into the sleeve of her robe and was using it to dry his cheeks.  He almost laughed at the absurdity of it; and this was enough to buy him a racheted breath.  He looked down into her face:  her eyes were still tearless, but filled with the same acceptance, both grim and graceful, meeting his.

He made his voice to work:  “I’m sorry.”

She still did not cry, but her mouth was small again, like a child’s.  “I know,” she said, reaching to catch his fresh tears with her sleeve.  “I know.”

With an effort Rupert got hold of himself.  If he had any say in the matter, she wouldn’t have to bear the weight of his apology on top of everything else.

She finished wiping his face, and they stood silently, eyes met, Rupert drawing long breaths.  “We will say no more about it,” she said quietly, freeing her hand to touch the damp hollow of his cheek with the back of her finger.

They had hardly said anything about it.  Rupert wondered if they needed to.  Perhaps surviving was enough.  He sniffed hard, and nodded to show he understood.

She went back to the toilet and peeled off a length of toilet paper for him to blow his nose on, which he used, drawing a last cornsilk breath, and tossed toward the toilet.  The wadded tissue hit the seat and fell to the floor, and they both laughed.  She bent and retrieved it, dropped it into the bowl, and returned to face him in the doorway.  They stood face to face once more, both shivering a little, neither knowing what to say.

Then the kettle gave a sudden bubbling whistle, and they were released.

 

*

 

She helped him make the tea, and within a short time they were settled once more on her couch, with her feet in his lap.  She sipped at her tea, which was fortified with milk and a dollop of brandy, and studied his profile thoughtfully.  He had put down his tea and secured her feet in his cup-warmed hands, his head tilted slightly back, his eyes closed as if in meditation.  His face bruised, his skin creased more sharply with age and weariness, he looked vulnerable, more vulnerable even than when he had been weeping ten minutes before.  He was not, however, going to fall apart, and neither was she:  as much of a luxury as that might have been, they were both going to be forced to go about the business of surviving.  Elisabeth was beginning to feel a touch more philosophical about this; the miasma of nausea and despair was beginning to clear, leaving her feeling oddly cleansed.  This was no surprise either.  Elisabeth closed her eyes and sipped deeply at her tea.  Covering her mirrors was beginning, in retrospect, to seem slightly overwrought, but she was resolved not to shame herself for it: that would only lead her back where she had started.

            As if following her thoughts, Rupert asked:  “Is all this going to make you ill again?”

            She opened her eyes to his face; he was looking at her anxiously.  For Rupert, at this point, she knew only an honest answer would do.  She thought about it, letting her gaze go unfocused.

            “It might,” she said finally.  “I don’t know.  But even if it does, I’ll get well again.”  She looked back up again, and before she could stop herself, she asked:  “Can you stay a day or two?”

            His answer was both welcome and troubling:  “I’m not going anywhere for a while.  I mean to stay home at least a week.”

            She hesitated.  “Are—are you sure?  There isn’t a thing?”

            “I mean to stay home at least a week,” Rupert said firmly.

            “Because if there’s something important going on—”

            “There is.  Right here.”

            She gave him a look.  “Don’t be diffident.  I’m talking about the work you have to do.  Isn’t it—aren’t you—finding Slayers?  If you’re needed—”

            “This week,” Rupert said, flushing, “the work can go hang.  And considering the state you’ve been in, what makes you think I’d even consider abandoning—”

            “Whoaaa—rein in there, pardner.  Rupert:  can you imagine I’d take other than a practical view of this situation?  I mean, this thing is global now, if it wasn’t before, and you’re shorthanded as it is.  The question is, _are you needed_?”

            He glared at her and took in a long, visible breath.  At last he said, quietly:  “At the moment?  No.”

            “Okay.  That’s all I wanted to know.”

            There was a silence that did nothing to ease the sullen glare on his face.  “Does this mean,” he said at length, “that you don’t plan to divorce yourself from it this time?”

            She stared at him:  a strong hint of guilt tinged his lowered expression.  Elisabeth couldn’t remember the last time she had seen him this chaotic…no, yes she could, and it wasn’t a consoling thought.  “I wouldn’t have taken you back into my bed,” she said slowly, “if that were the case.”

            “That didn’t stop you before.”  There was a long, awful silence, and he lowered his chin even more.  Elisabeth felt a constriction in her chest that had nothing to do with the remnants of illness.

            “I didn’t realize you were still angry with me about that,” she said quietly.

            “I’m not,” he said—gave a shake of the head, acknowledging the absurdity of that claim— “I shouldn’t be.  You _were_ right, after all.”  He leaned his head back and addressed a deep sigh to the ceiling.  “Oh, God, how right you were.”

            “I don’t know that I was,” she said, even more quietly.  “And I can’t know, now.”  There was an ache in her throat and she masked it with a sip of her tea.  It couldn’t be anything but a bad idea to have this conversation now, but she couldn’t see any way to avoid it.  She drew a fortifying breath.

“I hurt you,” she said; and the acknowledgement made him look at her at last.

“You couldn’t have—”  He stopped, and started over.  “It’s foolish of me to have taken it personally.  Especially when—” he dropped his eyes to her feet— “I depend on—others—not to take my actions personally.”

She wasn’t going to let him go down that road.  “It _was _personal,” she said.

He started, and looked up to search her face.  Elisabeth repeated it.  “It was personal, what I did.  Buffy’s not the only one who is her job.  I knew that.  I understood your job—but I didn’t—in the end, I didn’t want it to touch me.  I was afraid—”  She broke off:  she had been trying not to use that word.  But it was too late, and she returned her eyes stoically to his face.  “I was afraid,” she said; and left it at that.

He sat with his eyes and his hands on her feet, turning the thought over.  “Not without reason,” he murmured.

If only, Elisabeth thought, her throat aching, they could have said these things before.  Not that they had not tried.

He turned once more to look her in the face, with an expression that made her heart hurt.  “And now?”

They were both so tired; their heads listed along the same plane with the back of the couch, as if at a predetermined signal they might rest against it, faces almost close.

“Is there anything left to be afraid of?” Elisabeth asked softly.

            The lines of grief were hard around his mouth.  “No worst, there is none.”

            “Then you understand,” she said, simply.

            He turned his eyes, wide with momentous thought, back down to her feet.  Elisabeth had a sudden vision of what he must have looked like as a boy, the boy he had brought with him through the years.  He was exactly what she wanted, and she was almost frightened at her lack of misgiving.

            He gave a heavy sigh.  “I can give you almost nothing,” he said.

            “…But blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” Elisabeth finished, with a small smile at the memory of the dream she had had, waiting alone in Rupert’s flat.  “I’ll take it.”

            He looked up at her, badly startled; then turned his gaze inward.  “What?” Elisabeth said.  “What is it?”

            “It’s nothing,” he said at last.  “Just an odd sense of _déjà vu_.  I had an odd dream,” he added, when she continued to look at him expectantly, “before the battle.  About that night at my house.  I held your feet then, too.”

            Elisabeth went very still.  “And quoted Churchill?”

            “Yes,” he said dreamily, not catching on, “and you said something to me about—”

            “Maundy Thursday,” Elisabeth said.

            Then he did turn again to stare, his breath arrested.  A faint breath of wonder came into his expression; he whispered, “It was you.”

            “It was us,” she said quietly.

            He glanced down at her feet in his lap, as if a clue might lie between them.  “And now we are here.”

            “Looks like,” she said.  And laid her head against the back of the couch.  “Also?”  He looked at her.  “You called it home.”  A faint smile grew in her face, and she shut her eyes, her tea mug tipped just short of danger in her hands.

            “Mmm,” was his only reply.  And they breathed quietly together.

 

*

 

That night they went to bed early.  Rupert went out to his car and retrieved his overnight bag, which was stuffed mostly with dirty laundry now.  By the time he had brushed his teeth and undressed for bed, Elisabeth was already there, curled in what should have been a relaxed position but was belied by her rigid motionlessness.

            He bent over her and stroked back her hair.  “Is there anything you can take?” he asked softly.

            “I’m out of tranquilizers,” was her short reply.

            “Anything else?”

            She shook her head against the pillow.  “I’ll be all right eventually,” she said.  “It has to run its course.”

            He gave her a small nod and moved round to his side of the bed.  Instead of sinking down beneath the covers, however, he propped his pillow against the headboard and arranged himself in a half-seated curled position, mirroring her body but not touching her.  “I’ll watch till you fall asleep,” he said.

            She turned her head to look back at him.  “But you’re tired, too.”

            He smoothed her shirt down her shoulder and answered her in a voice effortlessly light with gentleness.  “Do you really think this costs me very much?”

            For answer she put her head back down and shut her eyes.

            “Just rest,” Rupert said, stroking her arm.

            He watched her as she slipped from stage to stage on the way to sleep:  she shivered under his hand; her eyelids slid closed, lashes trembling; her breathing shuddered and then grew more even.  He watched for a little while, then drew the edge of the covers higher over her, and dropped his head to rest his brow against the top of her pillow.  His thoughts lost substance in the roil of his remaining headache, and before he could change positions, he was asleep himself, in the still lamplight.

 

*

 

It was a very disturbed night.  Her sleep was fitful at best, and she kept waking to a skittering tumble of half-thought that was both familiar and frightening in its disorganization.  Rupert was little better off; he had fallen asleep hunched over her like a guardian, and she found him twitching, swallowing moans, or snoring unevenly, every time she woke.  _We’re some pair_, she thought once, with that part of her mind that always cracked a wry comment from her mental sideline every time she flirted with madness.  _Some pair, eh Rupert?_

            Once, she was startled edgewise into wakefulness when he jerked in his sleep and stifled a cry, and she had to force her mind into some kind of order so that she could reach out and soothe him.  “Shh,” she croaked.  “Shh, Rupert.  You’re okay.”  His soft eyelashes flickered, but in the end he subsided without waking, and she lay back down, her vision and mind dull and unfocused, for another ten minutes before dropping off again.

            Not until the early hint of waning night crept over the flat did they both settle into a true sleep, quiet and still with profound exhaustion.  When Elisabeth bubbled up slowly from unconsciousness she found that her companion was already lying lazily awake, staring up at the slowly revolving blades of the ceiling fan.  She slipped a hand over the covers on his chest, and he responded minimally, pressing her fingers against the warmth of his thin T-shirt.

            “All right?” he murmured, after five minutes.

            “Mmm,” she answered.

            Another long moment passed.

            “Coffee?” she said.

            “Oh, yes please,” he groaned.  He moved, maintaining touch with her, but paused.  “Shower first, I think,” he added.  “I’m a bit ripe.  My last shower was in France.”

            She raised her head and smiled, not daunted as she rolled over to kiss him.  “I’ll make the coffee.”

            He heaved himself, grunting, up and out of the bed; Elisabeth lay still for a moment, watching him adjust his wrinkled T-shirt and boxers and indulge in a long stretch: seasoned skin over well-aged muscles, deep furrow of spine half-defined by the thin drape of his T-shirt, the down of male hair on his legs, the comical pouch of his boxers in back.  She smiled as he dropped his arms and puttered out of the room, rubbing at his jaw and under his nose; then she rolled to her back and waited for her thoughts to straighten themselves into daylight alertness.  She needed to make a trip to the library; she owed Dr. Biggs a paper and Mr. Edwards a phone call.  That was the thing about returning from sickness and despair, one had to backtrack and begin again to meet one’s responsibilities.  Not that it wouldn’t be welcome; surviving had taught Elisabeth, among other things, how much she loved her work.

            The shower water started; Elisabeth blinked out of her reverie and got out of bed.

            In the kitchen, later, she stood nursing her cup of coffee and listening to the water run.  Rupert was taking a very long shower.  But then he had probably earned it; that bump on his head was no joke.  Disorganized thoughts about wounds visible and invisible shaped themselves in Elisabeth’s mind.  She had dreamed once that she had broken her leg somehow, and in the dream had jumped up and shrugged and laughed and kept on running, despite her companions’ protests.  In the dream she had felt no pain, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered if she had: the point had been her frenetic headlong charge in spite of—and perhaps because of—injury.  She twisted her mouth into a wry grimace and took another sip of her cooling coffee.  There was startlingly little difference, she reflected, between dream and reality in this instance.

            The shower shut off abruptly, and she heard him rattle back the shower curtain.  Taking her time, Elisabeth washed out her coffee cup, took a selection of Rupert’s clothes from the dryer, and returned to her bedroom.  On the way, she glanced in the bathroom:  he was shaving meditatively, lower lip poked up to get at his chin; his skin looked pink and warm above the damp towel he had wrapped about his waist.

            Elisabeth paused, her face going hot.  Glancing down, she saw she still had his clothes in her arms; they seemed rather irrelevant now, so she went into the bedroom and dropped them on the bed.  Then she stripped her own T-shirt over her head, and dropped the leggings to the floor.

            A few minutes later, she sidled into the bathroom with her kimono belted loosely over her naked skin.  He was splashing his face with warm water; he patted about the counter for the hand towel, and at last his eyes emerged above it, open and alert.

            He turned and saw her; she saw his eyes take in her state of dress.

            “Oh, I’m sorry.  Did you want in here?  I didn’t mean to hog the bathroom.”

            “No,” Elisabeth said.  She backed up to the counter and hoisted herself up to sit on it.

            “No?”  His shy, diffident look told her exactly what she wanted to know, and her skin warmed, rejoicing.

            “No,” she said.  “I came in here to seduce you.”

            He cast his eyes down, a little smile gathering on his lips.  “I wondered how soon I might reasonably hope for that,” he murmured.

            She slipped her finger into the curl of his palm and drew him, lightly, over to face her directly.  “Ask me,” she whispered.

            He leaned in toward her ever so slightly, like a candle flame bending to flirt with a hand placed near it.  “When might I hope for you to seduce me?” he asked, his voice low.  His scent washed over her, damp warmth and shampoo and shaving soap, and a little shiver went through her, chasing, as she imagined, all the unpleasant shivers of the past few days out of her body.

            “Oh, I think—” she murmured, leaning in, her lips close to his and their breath mingling— “just about…now.”  She kissed him, very lightly.  He kept close, eyes closed, waiting for her to continue; so she kissed him again, and then again, keeping her touch light and her lips gentle.  After a moment she lifted a hand to trace his jawline and moved closer to savor the taste of his mouth; and with a shudder he responded fully all at once, kissing her back with equal fervor, his hands slipping in to mold the silk kimono to the curve of her hips.

            “Speaking from a purely selfish point of view,” he broke the kiss to say— “this is the best gift I ever gave you.”

            “It’s rather high on my list, too.”  She lifted her other hand and buried both in his damp hair.  She kissed him, holding him thus, till he made a soft sound in the back of his throat; then she freed her hands to rove his freshly-bathed skin.  He undid the tie of her kimono, and as he drew the folds of silk apart she slipped her hands round his waist, to explore the place where the furrow of his spine disappeared into the wrap of towel.

            His kiss wandered from her mouth to her cheek and eyelid.  “Would you call this,” he said breathlessly, “a successful seduction?”

            For answer, she smoothed her hand round the hem of the anchored towel: it sagged around his waist, and then it dropped to the floor.

 

*

 

After, she clung to him, nuzzling the lee of his shoulder, tasting its dampness, waiting for their breathing to slow.

            “Mmm,” he said at last.

            She could feel him smiling.  Without opening her eyes, she bent her head and kissed his skin above the breast, smiling too.  Then she pulled back to grin at him.  “My turn for the shower,” she said.  “Bathroom hog.”

            He grinned back, and smacked her backside lightly.  They both gave a little snort of laughter; kissed one another open-eyed; and then he began to help her down from the counter.

 

*

 

When Elisabeth got out of the shower, glowing, she found that Rupert had made breakfast; he had also set her little dining table with the nicest plates and silver she had, and unearthed a small cobalt vase from beneath her sink; it now gleamed clean, with a sprig of rosemary in it.  “Rosemary?” she asked him.

            “In the neighbor’s garden,” he replied with a small grin.  “I figured it would be least missed.”

            Appetite had returned to her along with the mere joy of seeing him across the table.  She couldn’t yet be sure if these simple joys made it easier or harder to navigate these chaotic days, but for moments at a time it seemed enough, to drink them in without asking questions.  At times, as they ate, his eyes would lift to her face with a mirroring expression of relieved joy tinged with mortal uncertainty; but they did not need to say anything, and they finished their meal in a companionable silence.

            She volunteered to wash up while he sorted his laundry and cleaned up in the bathroom; and after these tasks were finished she let him putter comfortably, coffee in hand, while she sat down to answer long-neglected emails and put the finishing touches to the draft of her paper.

            After a time he approached her in her chair and put down his coffee mug to massage the nape of her neck.  She shut her eyes briefly, with a little purr of pleasure, and then returned to her work as his strong fingers moved to her shoulders, seeking out the tension and releasing it.  “I could give you a full massage, when you’re finished,” he said, reaching with his thumb between the chair and her back.

            She nodded, unable to trust her voice.  A new response took hold, delayed by the numbness of her illness:  widening grief at the tenderness in his touch, a tenderness like her lost mother’s, matter-of-fact and unalterably _for_ her, as of protection and sponsorship.  For a moment, she felt, he had never touched her any other way.  _I was always true to you in my fashion_….  Perhaps, in a sense beyond hard fact, he always had been true to her.  She swallowed hard, and with an effort edited the last sentence and posted the draft off to Dr. Biggs.

            “Go lie down,” he said.  “I’ll bring you some coffee.”

            She went, hoping that the few moments alone would help her recover.  But when he followed her a few minutes later to present her with a mug of coffee prepared with exactly the amount of milk and sugar she liked, she could only sit miserably on the edge of the bed and fight a losing battle with tears.

            “What is it?” she heard him ask.  “What’s wrong?”

            She shook her head.

            He put the coffee down on the night table and reached for her:  she put out a blind hand, as if to ward him off, except she found herself gripping his T-shirt at the waist; and at the end she gave up and cried into his stomach, his bewildered hands stroking her hair.

            She had to be able to live without him.  She couldn’t afford to want him this badly, couldn’t afford to put any weight on his coming home the next time, or his being able—or even willing—to be _for_ her as he was at this moment.  It was sickness to need him, she had tried so hard to avoid it, all her life—all both lives—and of course that was pathology too, nobody could be that independent, nobody should be, it wasn’t right to pretend to invincible immortality and shame oneself for failing—she had always wanted to live untouched—but didn’t that mean being the First? and she wanted to touch him, wanted never not to be touching him; was it sickness or health?  She didn’t know, and either way it hurt—

            As she wept her thought simplified.  She had nearly lost him; she had him back.  Perhaps this was enough.  Her tears spent themselves; and by the time she had thought this, she had finished altogether.  She leaned, sniffling, against Rupert’s front, with her arms up around his waist, and breathed herself back into a semblance of equilibrium.  At length she lifted her head to look up into his face.  To her relief, he was not weeping himself; his expression was a familiar blend of stoicism and gentleness.  “Better?” he asked softly.

            She pursed her lips into a wry near-smile.  “I think so.  A bit.”  She burrowed her face into his front again.

            He moved, bending to pile all the pillows on the bed against the headboard, and shifted her so that he could crawl behind her onto the bed.  Acquiescently she followed his lead, so that in the end they were sharing the piled pillows, looking down the length of their nestled bodies.

            “Tell me about your paper?” Rupert said, settling her head into the hollow of his shoulder.

            She told him about the confluence of images in Chaucer, hagiography, and the book of Job, about power dynamics between utterly helpless people (usually women) and their accusers and oppressors, about the holiness of complaint and justification by history.  “It sounds interesting reading,” he said.  She twisted her head around in an attempt to look at him, and he added, “No, really.  It says something about life.  You make the subject sound like something interesting in itself.”  There was a hint of humor in his voice, but she interpreted it as self-deprecation rather than amusement at her, and relaxed.

            “All right,” she said, “tell me about—where was it you went?”

            “Paris,” he said.

            “Tell me about Paris.”  She snuggled close and let her eyelids fall to half-mast.  “And lay it on thick.  I’ve never been there.”

            But Rupert suddenly went rigid.  “Oh, shit!” he said.

            She half-rose.  “What?  What?”

            “Damn, and damn,” he said.  “I forgot to call Buffy when I got back yesterday.”

            “Oops,” Elisabeth said, raising her eyebrows.

            “I was supposed to give her my new mobile number, and let her know everything was all right up here.”  He lurched up and got off the bed to retrieve his cell-phone, and returned to the bedroom dialing.  “Don’t look at me like that,” he said to Elisabeth— “hello?  Hello?  Buffy, it’s me.”

            He pulled the phone away from his ear, and even Elisabeth could hear Buffy’s voice raised to an instant shout.  “Rupert fucking Giles, you are _so_ fucking paying for this Chunnel ticket!”

            Elisabeth saw the split-second stalled look on his face before he answered, precipitately, “That’s not my second name.”

            “It is now, you bastard, goddammit.  I spoke _French_ for this ticket.”

            “Buffy—”

            “It was damn good French too—”

            “Yes,” he said tensely, “but you’re not—actually _on_ the train yet.  Are you?”

            “Standing on the platform, Giles.” (Rupert pulled the phone away from his ear again.) “Waiting for them to call my number.  In French.”

            “Well, good,” Rupert stammered.

            “I have half a mind to come up there anyway and kill you.  Or at least kick your ass, for not being dead.”

            “Buffy, I hardly think that’s—”

            “Because if you’re gonna be dead, the least you could do is call and tell me!”

            Elisabeth heard plainly the little wobble in Buffy’s voice at the end of that sentence.  She bared her teeth at Rupert in an alarmed grimace, took her coffee mug, and departed, shutting the bedroom door behind her.

            She lurked in the kitchen, pouring out the cold coffee and putting on water for tea, trying not to hear—no, there it was—Rupert’s voice half-raised in the wounded, plaintive pitch she’d been dreading.  She winced and turned up the fire under the kettle.  It struck her as odd that Buffy should have gotten the wind up about Rupert now, while regarding his much more dangerous absences the past year with relative implacability; but as she thought about it, it made perfect sense.  “Post-apocalypse freakout,” she said to herself—and rolled her eyes: it was a good description of her state of mind, too. 

            She was bobbing the teabag in her cup when Rupert emerged, stalking into the livingroom with the aura of family combat radiating off him in waves.  “Did you apologize properly?” Elisabeth inquired.

            “She wants to talk to you,” Rupert said, holding up the phone.

            Elisabeth blinked.  “Oh.”  Belatedly she moved from the kitchen doorway, dropping her teabag in the bin on her way, took the warm little phone from Rupert’s hand, and headed back to the bedroom.  “Hello?”

            “Hi.”  Buffy sounded much calmer now.  Elisabeth took a nervous sip of her tea.  “Listen,” she went on.  “Gimme the dish on Giles.  Is he cracking up still?”

            “You have to ask?” Elisabeth said dryly.  “Hey, are you still waiting for the train?”

            “No, I’m in a café in the station.  I’m not kidding about his paying for the Chunnel ticket, though.  Anyway, I wanted to ask you:  do you want to be a contact in our network?”

            “A what?”  Elisabeth squinted at the wall.  “Are you eating something?”

            “Had to order something.  Forgot what it’s called.  It has lots of chocolate.  Which I deserve.  What I said was, do you want to be a contact?  I mean, it’s not a slight on Giles’s competence or anything—” a hint of residual pique sharpened Buffy’s tone for a moment— “it’s just that I don’t want any of us working alone if we can help it.  And Giles is a bit….”

            “Fragile?”

            “Or something.  You would know better than me.”

            Elisabeth blinked.

            “Um…Elisabeth?”

            “Oh, I’m here.  I was just thinking.”

            “Totally,” Buffy said.  “It’s not like this job is a bed of roses.”

            “I always thought the idea of lying on roses was a bit overrated,” Elisabeth said.

            “You know, you’re right.”  Buffy, from the sound of it, had taken another large bite of the chocolaty thing.  “Hate roses, anyway.”

            Elisabeth said cautiously, “Well…this is what I think.  I don’t mind being a contact, or helping Rupert with the work.  But I think I’d better keep myself in an…auxiliary role.  I think that if Rupert knows I’m in the email loop, and on the phone tree….”

            “He’ll leave you with the work of communicating.  Good point.”  Buffy took another bite and waited till she could swallow before continuing.  “Excellent point.  I mean, what I had to go through just to get him to buy a cell-phone.”

            “Yeah.  It’s a pretty fancy one, though.  We’ll let him pretend he doesn’t like it.”

            Buffy started laughing; Elisabeth heard a chink of falling silverware.  “Oh my God.  Does it take pictures?”

            “Oh, absolutely.”

            Buffy sighed.  “All that sexy technology, and he _still_ didn’t call me.”

            “Well,” Elisabeth said, “it was a rather difficult evening.  I was ill when he arrived, and a bit helpless.”

            “He mentioned that.  Are you okay?”

            Elisabeth shrugged, though Buffy couldn’t see it.  “More or less.”

            “Good,” Buffy said.  “It’s been a shitty time.”

            “You got that right,” Elisabeth said.

            “Well, look, I’m gonna go.  I’d better change directions and head back to Italy before Dawn scales the convent wall.”

            “The whaaat?”

            “Joke.  Well, kinda.  Kids these days.”

            Elisabeth snorted into a laugh.

            “At least I got some decent shopping out of this trip.  And shopping seems to be the same everywhere—you just point, grunt, and flash your plastic.”

            “I would think.”

            “You’ll keep an eye on Giles for me?”

            “Yes,” Elisabeth said, “and poke him to call you when he needs it.”

            “Do that.  I need a woman in my corner, with him.”

            Elisabeth snorted again.

            “Well, _au revoir_ and all that.”

            “Ta-ta.”

            “Cheerio.”

            “Bung-ho!”

            “_Hasta la vista_.”

            “Bye.”

            “Bye.”

            Elisabeth found the End button and pressed it, feeling an upsurge of hilarity.  She picked up her tea from where she’d parked it on the dresser and carried it and the phone out to the livingroom where a feral Rupert was pacing at speed.  “Here you go,” she said, handing off the closed phone to him and ignoring his tercel stare.  “All done.”

            “What’d she say?” he demanded.

            Elisabeth shrugged.  “She wanted to establish contact with me.  That’s pretty much it.  Also, it was the best phone conversation I’ve had with Buffy in, like, ever.  So that’s a plus.”

            “Well, bully for you,” Rupert said, pocketing the phone.

            “I’m guessing not so much for you?”

            He gave her the stare again.  Elisabeth found herself breaking into a small irrepressible smile; she coughed, and swallowed it with an effort.

            He planted his fists on his hips and turned his glare off into the distance.  “Buffy’s developed this distressing habit of swearing at me.  I don’t understand it.”

            Elisabeth couldn’t stop the snort of laughter shooting through her sinuses.  Rupert turned sharply on her.  Unable to control herself, she sank down on the couch and set her tea down on her disreputable coffee table, and went into quiet convulsions of laughter.

            “It’s not funny,” he said, which of course only made her laugh harder.

            “Rupert f-fucking Giles,” she choked out, and went off into a loud fit of hysterics.

            She had a tear-blurred vision of him maintaining his basilisk glare at her for about ten seconds before he cracked.  He started to laugh, ruefully at first, then hilariously, then dropped next to her on the couch and laughed uproariously.  At last Elisabeth wiped her wet face and sighed a few breaths, then uttered, “Oh, God.”

            He turned to her a mirroring weepy face.  “My new second name,” he said, his voice light and hollow with tears and laughter.

            She took his hand and pulled him up with her.  “Get a cup of tea,” she said.  “Come back to bed, and tell me about Paris.  I want to know how you got the bump on your head.  It looks better, by the way.”

            He felt gingerly at it.  “I’d almost forgotten.  It’s a story of deep ignominy.”

            “Aren’t they all?”

            He looked round for something to throw at her, but by the time he saw the teatowel lying on the table, she had scooped up her mug and escaped back to the bedroom, hooting.

 

*

 

In the small haven of her bed, they nestled together sock-footed, and Rupert told her about Paris.  He had arranged his position so that he could watch her face as he told the story, laying it on thick as she had asked; she raised one eyebrow, or both, at all the right places, and did not laugh at him till he had finished.  But even that did not last long.

            “What’s going to happen to those girls?” she asked him.

            “Well,” he said, “there’s a convent in the French Alps, run by several generations of women who—well, they don’t seem to think too highly of Watchers since the Council tried to take one of their novitiates in the 1780s, who happened to be a Potential—anyway, Buffy found them last week or so, and they are providing a trustworthy person to conduct them there.  So we should hope that they get better care than they had been receiving; they were hardly able to understand their own power, it’s too new to them yet.”

            “The circle widens.”  Elisabeth was looking at him gravely.

            “Yes,” he said.  His eyes and thoughts lost focus, until she touched his hand, and he saw her face again.  She did not say, _you can only do a bit at a time_; but she did not need to.  He offered her a small smile and settled back more comfortably against the propped pillows.  He let his gaze travel idly over her small T-shirt and the curve of her hip and thigh under her pajama pants.  After a long moment he realized he was staring, and returned his eyes to her face, which wore an expression of amusement and affection that seemed to undo a knot somewhere inside him.

            He cleared his throat.  “It’s way past lunch.”

            “You hungry?” she inquired, making no move to get up.

            He gave her a long, speculative look.  “No,” he said finally.  “Or—well—”  He stopped, his eyes on the curve of her thigh.  He was silent so long that Elisabeth asked him, humorously, “What are you thinking?”

            He looked her in the face.  “I was thinking,” he said, deliberately, “that I have no place to touch you the way I’d like to.”

            Her expression was still humorous, but a hint of reproach came into it.  “And that would be because…?”

            He leaned close, daring—daring— “I haven’t—we never have—you haven’t been—”

            “Try me,” she whispered.

            He could feel her soft breath against his lips.  He stammered, “But what if—”

            “Rupert, for heaven’s sake,” she said, and kissed him.  When she pulled back, waiting for his verdict, he was already afire.

            He could see in her face the same latent uncertainty that had always informed his approaches to her (even at their most passionate moments), at first because of her inexperience, and then because of her vulnerability, and now because of the whole morass of wrongs and mental imbalances that still lay between them:  but along with that uncertainty was its obverse, a sense of choice, a determination that did not deal in clenched teeth but in quiet deliberation moment to moment.  A certainty like his own, the certainty of a person who more or less knew herself, for better and worse.  He loved this in her, and was frightened by it in the same way that he frightened himself.

            He brought up a hand, tentative at first, to slip along her jaw and touch the soft ribbon of hair behind her ear.  Their gazes met and held:  and he couldn’t hold back any longer.  He reached for her mouth in what was more a crush than a kiss, snarled his fingers in her hair and held tight, slipped an urgent hand under her head and aligned his body to hers.

            And she responded; oh, God, she responded; her hands darted under the hem of his T-shirt and she pressed close as by gravity, and he rolled her to lie on top of him so that he could let go her hair and strip off her shirt and yank hard at her pants.  Then he rolled her over again and kissed her, devoured her, from her mouth to her collarbone to her soft, round breasts, frantic to touch her everywhere at once.  He felt her hands in his hair; they slipped through and let go as he moved downward, working off the rest of her clothing, pressing his face into the softness of her belly, the streamlined flesh of her thigh, muscle and curve—“like art,” he uttered, foolishly—

            He rose up again, to bring the taste of her own body back to her mouth, hands claiming every inch they could reach as hers worked furiously to undress him at the waist:  he heard a soft stripped reed of breath lance through her throat, and she uttered his name, in such a note that he instantly demanded she say it again.  “Rupert,” she said, louder, and his urgency to be inside her increased tenfold.  He let his weight fall upon her, felt her curl around him, limbs and flesh; then he raised himself on shaking elbows to look into her face.

            Her eyes were open, and when their gazes met she grinned and whispered, “Rupert f—”

            Hastily he covered her mouth with his whole hand, suppressing a upsurge of laughter.  “You make me laugh,” he gasped, “I won’t be able to live up to my new second name.”

            She was laughing under his hand; he felt her tongue teasing at his fingers, and bent to replace his hand with his mouth.

            He rose once more and drew her down the bed with him, to give them room to move.  He did not wait to ascertain whether she was ready for him; but gloriously she was, and he pushed hard, needing her, claiming her, over and over—over and over again—

            He bared his teeth, pressing hard; he heard her give a half-voiced cry that might have been pain, might have been ecstasy, and was certainly beyond him.  Unprepared for the shock of the power that went through him, he cried out and collapsed upon her, shaking, breathing quick and shallow, held immobile by the tangle of his jeans and her pajama pants around their ankles.

            “I think you lived up to it,” she said, some time later, her voice still reedy.

            He started laughing, silent, teeth-bared laughing at first, then his voice caught up, and it sounded like a sob.  Her hand buried itself in his hair, comfortingly.  He lifted his head.

            “You were with me,” he said, as if to confirm it.

            She cupped his face in her hands.  “I was with you,” she answered.

            They touched faces for a moment, eyes closed.  Then she said:

            “Shall we get the rest of these clothes off?  I mean, I really like your cell-phone, but do we need to have it in bed with us?”

            “W-what?”

            “It’s falling out of your pocket.  I can feel it on my leg; it’s cold.”

It seemed Rupert hadn’t forgotten how to laugh, after all.

 

*

 

They spent the rest of the day in bed, clothed only briefly, to take delivery of Chinese food and a pizza late in the afternoon.  He gave her the massage he had promised her; she held him with his head upon her breast and stroked his hair; they made love a third time, near sunset, Elisabeth riding him gently, looking down into his face the while.

            Later, she lay with her head resting gently upon the softness of his belly, an arm flung gracefully over him, the fingers of her other hand twined with his.  “Tired?” she asked, looking up to his heavy-lidded eyes.

            “Knackered,” he said, with a little moan tinged equally with satisfaction and self-pity.  “I’m not a young man anymore.”

            Her lips curved into a wicked little smile.  “Well, it could be worse, you know.”

            He shut his eyes but could not stop the answering smile.  “That is true.  Knock on wood.”

            She reached out with her big toe and kicked the nightstand lightly in an attempt at meeting the superstition.

            “How’s your head?” she asked him.  He opened his eyes, flushing, and she clarified, “I mean, the site of your injury,” with another little smile.

            The blush still rose hot on his face, but he closed his eyes again, smiling.  “It’s fine.”

            “At least it won’t add another scar to your collection….How many do you have, anyway?”

            He snorted gently.  “I’ve never counted them.”

            She lifted her head and surveyed the length of his body, trying to remember where she had seen the various marks of his career.  At the moment, however, she felt too lazily sleepy to look much closer than the broad raised scar of the wound she had changed the dressing on two years before, where her head had been lying.  “This one healed well, considering.”

            “Mmm,” he said.

            She laid her head back down and searched with her hands, expecting to find nothing; but as one hand swiped under his waist she found a familiar mole, which reminded her of another scar.  “Oh, I’d forgotten about this one,” she said, shifting so that she could run her fingertips down to the edge of a splash of scar at the top of his buttock.  “What’s this one from?”

            He sighed and opened his eyes to look at the ceiling.

            Elisabeth brightened suddenly.  “Oh, that’s right.  Isn’t this where Jenny shot you with a crossbow?”

            He let out another rueful sigh and smiled up at the ceiling.  “Good times,” he said.

            Elisabeth chuckled and lay her head down again, withdrawing her hand.  His fingers drifted down to stroke her hair.

            “D’you have any?” he asked, almost dreamily.

            “Any what?  Oh, scars?  Not many.  Most of mine are psychological.  The others I got by accident, or disease.  No combat, no crossbow bolts to the ass….The women in your life do seem to end up shooting at you there one way and another.”

            “Why do you think I’ve never let you behind me with a projectile weapon?”

            Elisabeth snickered.  “You really think I’d accidentally shoot you in the ass?”

            “I’m not worried about its being an accident.”

            They both laughed.

            “Probably smart,” Elisabeth said at last, closing her eyes.  “Though I _do_ love you.”

            His hand moved again, stroking her hair over her naked shoulder, his breathing soft under her head.

 

*

 

For the first time in a long time, both Elisabeth and Rupert slept well.  They rose in the morning, breakfasted on tea and biscuits (Elisabeth’s last grocery trip had been more than a week ago), and reluctantly got dressed.  For a while Rupert puttered, nosing among her books, while Elisabeth sat down at her desk and got some work done.

            Time passed comfortably, until Rupert began to feel distinctly peckish; he was on the point of saying something to Elisabeth about perhaps possibly popping out for an early lunch at her favorite pub, when there came a knock at the door: _shave and a haircut, six bits_.

            “Oh!” Elisabeth jumped in her chair.  “I’m not fully dressed yet.  Rupert, would you go answer that, please?”  She scuttled into the bedroom, the tail of her rose silk kimono fluttering behind her.

            Rupert had his suspicions about this; and sure enough, on the other side of the door stood Brian Whitaker.  He looked distinctly unhappy that it was Rupert greeting him but clearly meant not to make a fuss.  “Mr. Giles,” he said, jerking a nod.

            Rupert returned the nod, quirking it slightly to the side.  “Mr. Whitaker,” he said, and stepped back to let Brian enter.

            “I’m almost ready, Brian,” Elisabeth called from the bedroom.  “Rupert, get your shoes.”

            Brian flushed.  “You don’t mean to say—” he started, but clammed up suddenly and waited.

            Rupert glanced around and saw his scuffed boots sitting by the couch, but also decided to wait.  “I hope you are well,” he said to Brian.

            “Perfectly; thank you.”  The other man twisted slightly without uncrossing his arms to observe the pleasantry; Rupert noticed he was carrying his chin rather high.  “And you?”

            “Very well, thank you,” Rupert nodded.

            Elisabeth appeared, stuffing her foot into the other of a pair of sneakers and tying the lace stork-like on one leg.  “Ah, you’re there.  Good thing too, I was getting hungry.  Rupert, get your shoes; we’re going out to lunch.”

            “Elisabeth,” Brian said carefully, “when we made these plans, I did not anticipate that we would _all_ go.”

            “And,” Rupert added, “this is the first I’ve heard of the plan altogether.”

            Elisabeth paused in the straightening of her shoelace.  “Oh?  Did I forget to mention it to you?  Oops.”  Her expression was entirely too innocent.  “Hang on, let me get my jacket.”  She disappeared again.

            Rupert turned to look significantly at Brian, and saw that Brian was sending the same look back at him.  Rupert sighed deeply, and went to get his shoes.

 

*

 

By the standards Rupert and Brian had established, it was a perfectly comfortable and uneventful public outing.  There were some glares all round when Elisabeth came back out donning her windbreaker, and some elaborate politeness about the ticket at the pub (Elisabeth paid, thereby ensuring that the two men were equally offended), but no open unpleasantness occurred.  Brian sat ramrod straight, relaxing only when Elisabeth began to talk about her paper: a good topic, as both Brian and Rupert were able to say something about hagiographical records in general.  Rupert, feeling at first too resentful toward Elisabeth to help her move the conversation along, decided at length that it was not worth making them both suffer, and he suspected Brian of the same idea, because they both began making contributions at more or less the same moment.  Too, Brian shared Rupert’s concern that Elisabeth eat enough, and each in their own way urged her to eat not only her food but some of theirs, earning them both a half-amused glare.

            By the time the lunch was finished, it seemed to Rupert that a three-way rapport had been established: an irritable and austere rapport, it was true, but nevertheless enough to be going on with.  At any rate it seemed probable he and Brian would be able to keep their word not to brawl in bookshops anymore.

            Elisabeth got up to pay the bill and visit the restroom, and the two men wandered out to the vestibule to wait for her.  They had spoken little directly to one another, except in the heatless passion of thrashing out an academic point, and Rupert didn’t want to queer the pitch by trying to talk to him now.  But he did glance at him, and before he could prevent it he found himself meeting eyes with the man.  Brian’s expression was calm but otherwise unreadable; after a moment he said:

            “I know she loves you; and I respect that.  I’m not out to make trouble, or put my oar in.”  He leaned in a few inches closer, and his next words were very quiet and even.  “But I saw the bruises you left on her, and I’m not going to forget that.  I just wanted you to know.”

            They were an equal height; and they stood eye to eye for a moment, little heeding the couple who slipped past them out into the street.  “That’s fair,” Rupert said at last, very quietly.

            Brian gave him a small nod, and a few moments later Elisabeth rejoined them.  “All ready?”

            They both nodded, and the three of them began to push out the door.  Outside they parted.

 

*

 

No scars, Rupert thought as he and Elisabeth walked home.  No scars; but bruises.  They had faded and gone before he saw her, after the battle, and he had never known they ever existed, though he ought to have guessed.

            No scars, he thought.

            As they walked Elisabeth slipped her hand into the crook of his arm.  “Are you mad at me?” she asked, simply.

            He darted a glance down at her, and sighed.  “Not anymore.”

            “Okay,” she said; and that was that.

            But later, after a quick grocery trip, when they were finally settled together on the couch once more, he turned to her.  “Can I…can I ask you something?”

            “Yes?”

            “Did you and Brian ever go to bed?”

            Her eyes widened a bit, but she was savvy enough otherwise not to be surprised; she bought time with a sip of tea.  Rupert felt the need to temporize.

            “I mean, it’s not really my business if you did.  It’s just…I’d just like to know what I’m dealing with.”

            She nodded.  “That’s fair.  No; we never went to bed.  We fooled around some, mostly recreational.”  She poked out her lip and thought for a moment, then took another sip.  “I rather think the fact that we didn’t go below the belt, so to speak, was because of him, rather than me.”

            Rupert thought this over.  “Really?  He does think a lot of you.”

            “No,” she said, “that’s why I think so.  All his relationships are calculated to be superficial, and we were too good of friends straight away for that.”

            “And you?”

            She looked at him.  “He’s my friend.  It’s a good thing we didn’t actually sleep together; it wouldn’t have worked at all.  We know that now.”

            Rupert grunted.  “D’you think he’s—” he paused— “Is he gay, I wonder?”

            Elisabeth started to laugh.  “Thank you for the compliment.  No—no, I know what you mean, don’t worry.  I would suspect him of being more or less omnisexual, except for two main factors: one, he grew up in Manchester; and two, his father thinks his career at Oxford is a ‘pansy-ass job’ and doesn’t even make a load of money to make up for it.  That’ll tell you most of what you need to know about Brian.”

            “Ah,” Rupert said. “Indeed.”

            She smiled over at him.  “Anything else you’d like to know?  I’ll put out my question-answering shingle.”

            Rupert declined the invitation.  He already had plenty to think about.

 

*

 

Later that evening Elisabeth tried for a while to conceal her shakes; it had cost her a great deal to appear serene and unaffected at the luncheon, and she didn’t want either Rupert or Brian to know it.  But unfortunately Rupert had attuned himself to her, and soon dug out her secret.  He prescribed her a hot bath and sat on the toilet lid, reading to her from _Busman’s Honeymoon_.  He was very good at doing the voices, and Elisabeth sank deep in the steaming water and closed her eyes to listen.

            After the bath the reading continued; they took turns, chapter by chapter, until both of them were sleepy enough to call it a night.  Rupert wanted to keep the bedside light on for her, but he’d slept that way two nights already, and Elisabeth insisted that the bathroom light was good enough.  It took some doing, but she convinced him; and as if the act of being convinced had worn him out, Rupert fell asleep almost as soon as the light was out and they had got quiet.  Elisabeth worried for a while that she would never fall asleep, and fell asleep still worrying.

            And then her mind betrayed her.

            She dreamed the end of the apocalypse had been itself a dream, a blinded vision of wishful thinking, and again she was alone in her flat.  A knock came at the door, and as if she had done it a hundred times before, she went to answer it.

            He was there, Rupert was there, her enemy, the Rupert who hated her as father, mother and spouse to follow his black destiny.  She backed away from him, and he followed, as she knew he would; he pinned her against the wall, and spoke cruelly to her, and the hope she had earned in the daylight was torn away, because there was the First standing behind Rupert’s shoulder, egging him on: and then she was looking at it from the First’s point of view, watching Rupert pin her and hurt her and say those awful things, and heard her own cries in that voice she had learned to hate—_no—please—please_—

            A hand was gripping her from behind, pulling her away, saying her name; she resisted at first: she preferred the completion of losing to a hope that was a lie.  But the hand and voice were insistent, and shook her, gently and then harder, and for some reason she found herself lying down.

            She was in a bed; she was in her own bed, with the dream still in her consciousness like a poisonous gas, and Rupert’s arm was hard and strong around her, and he was speaking to her, not cruel things now but kind things, reassurances, and she broke and cried.  She cried, and he soothed her, until all that was left of the dream was herself in her bed, and Rupert, the Rupert who loved her, stroking her hair and murmuring meaninglessly in the darkness.

            “Were you dreaming?” he asked her at last, when he could sense she was calmer.

            She nodded.

            “What happened?” he asked her: the last thing in the world she wanted him to ask.

            “I just—it wasn’t over—and the First—”  She swallowed another sob, and said no more.

            “It was a dream,” he whispered.  “It was nothing but a dream.  Just rest.”  He kissed her hair; and in a guilty sort of relief Elisabeth subsided and nestled herself back into his arms, and let him comfort her.  In time her breathing evened itself out, her visceral shaking subsided, and her eyelids drooped.

            “Just rest,” Rupert said, and she closed her eyes, and fell into a sleep deeper than dreams, simply and at once.

 

In the morning, she woke to light, and to the world she was putting back together.


End file.
